Coolest Mini Golf Hole Ever!!!

Don't ya hate when you plop down your hard earned bucks to play a round of mini golf and then the course is totally uncreative? I mean, if you don't have at least a windmill and a loop-de-loop hole, I think people are entitled to their money back! Lilliputt Mini Golf in Grand Lake, CO. would not hear a complaint from me. Feast your eyes on this super elaborate hole which is worth the price of admission alone:

Camping With My Pal Yogi

Last week I took my family on our first camping trip. We spent three nights at the awesome Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Camp Resort in Quarryville, PA. The kids were beside themselves with excitement and we all had a really good time. Not only did we get to hang with our good bear friends Yogi and Boo Boo, we were also joined by some friends of ours who booked a visit at the same time as us. It was even more fun to have some other people to hang out with. We mostly stayed at the campground for the entire three days, minus a few hours for a grocery store run (and a hot pizza!) There are many activities at the park from arts and crafts to a pretty neat-o water park complete with slides and a huge water playground.

Now, my wife enjoys the great outdoors as much as the next person...but she needs her NOT PUBLIC restroom and some air conditioning. So, instead of completely roughing it, Yogi put us up in one of Jellystone's finer cabins:


This was our home for the week. In addition to our own bathroom w/shower and the nice cold air conditioning, we also had a kitchenette (which we hardly used,) a TV (which we only used to watch Yogi cartoons before bedtime,) and a few other comforts of home. We honestly didn't spend too much time inside, but it was nice to beat the heat every so often and also not have to walk the kids down to the bath houses to use the potty at three in the morning.

The kids took this opportunity to switch up their normal bunk positions from home and Tanner took the top bunk, while Elias slept on the ground level.

There's lots of cool things to do around the park. There's a pedal kart track for the kids which was pretty impressive. Tanner tore it up doing laps around the course...

....there is also volleyball, horseshoes, a playground and an arcade.

One night we hosted dinner at our campsite. Here we are with our friends enjoying various grilled meats and pasta salad.

We went on a wonderful nature walk through some paths that travel through the woods...

...the paths lead to a fishing hole in a secluded area. Jellystone really is as beautiful as it looks in all those cartoons.

One of the coolest attractions at the campground is their Jumping Pillow...

...it's basically a huge moon bounce without the walls. The best part is there are no age, height or weight restrictions. Anybody can join in the fun. It was super fun but also extremely tiring. Three minutes on this thing and grown-ups feel like they've just worked out for 45 minutes. Of course, kids can go for hours without taking a breath! I snapped this picture from across the road to illustrate how enormous this thing is...

Yogi and his crew have a lot of activities planned throughout the day. We played Candy Bar Bingo with jackpots of up to 52 candy bars. We didn't win! We also attended an ice cream social and a pool party. They had arts and crafts in the morning. The one day they were coloring Yogi Bear t-shirts with fabric markers. It looked really cool and I wanted the kids to do it but they were so excited about going to the water park I knew coloring a t-shirt wasn't going to hold their interested against having gallons of water dumped on them.

Another activity we attended was Sidewalk Chalk at the Basketball Court. I knew Tanner would really get into and he did drawing a whole city of buildings...and people with guns!?

Elias also got into the act with a portrait of our host...

The night we went over to our friend's site for dinner they treated us to some crazy good Grilled Cheese Pizza Sandwiches which were out of this world good!

Here's one more shot of us all playing cards one night...

South Family Camping Trip #1 was a success. The kids are already asking when we can go back. I'm hoping to take the boys tent camping sometime in the next month!

Atlantic City is Allegedly Always Turned On

I had a blast in Atlantic City, NJ this past weekend with my good friend Kevin. As I mentioned Friday, we went up to see one of our comedy idols Don Rickles perform live at the Borgata Casino. The show was fantastic as expected. He performed in The Music Box theatre which is a small 1,000 seat auditorium. Before Rickles came out, singer Tony DeSare entertained with classic tunes and voice that was at times a dead ringer for Frank Sinatra. He put on a very entertaining set, singing some modern songs like Prince's Kiss and also Springstein's Fire - both in a jazzy new arrangement. When Don Rickles took the stage, the crowd was on their feet to welcome the entertainment legend. Mr. Rickles sang, danced, told jokes and most importantly yelled and ridiculed the audience. It was a fantastic evening. I snapped a handful of pictures, as nobody was really enforcing the "No Flash Photography" rule. He never did get around to picking on Kevin and I, as we had hoped. But we still laughed ourselves silly.

I'm also giving a "thumbs up" plug to two places we ate at: The French Quarter Buffet at Showboat and the Fiesta Buffet breakfast at Tropicana. Both of these venues are high quality buffets with plentiful choices of very good food.

Read This Post You Hockey Puck

It's long been a dream of my buddy Kevin and I to see legendary comic Don Rickles perform live. Tonight we're heading up to Atlantic City, NJ to finally make that dream a reality. What would be the icing on the cake is for Mr. Rickles to direct a couple of his hilarious insults in our direction. And with 5th row tickets, we're hoping we've got an above average chance of making that dream also a reality.

Here's Rickles on Late Show with David Letterman Wednesday night, obviously in the area for his gig this weekend in NJ.

There's tons of great clips of Don Rickles online. Below is the video for Mr. Warmth performing at Ronald Regan's second inaguration in 1985.

Goofy For Disney Cruise Line

This is a piece of animation done to promote a new feature with the Disney Cruise Line check in process. It was done in the style of Goofy's "How To" cartoons from the 40's & 50's. Very brief, but Big Fun!

We Didn't See Michael Scott

The week before Christmas we found ourselves about 30 minutes outside of Scranton, PA and decided to make the trek into town to visit the home of the Dunder Mifflin Paper Company as seen on the hit NBC show The Office. Now, I wouldn't consider myself a huge Office fan, but I do watch the show every week and I had heard that even though the show is filmed in LA, the real town of Scranton has sort of embraced their celebrity status and a had a few sites for Office fans to check out. Since none of the shows I'm ever really into reach that sort of status, I though it would be cool to check out the sights of Scranton. (Until they build an Alf Amusement Park or a Family Ties Museum in Columbus, I'll take Scranton.)

The Scranton Welcomes You sign (pictured above) is the actual prop used in the opening of the show.

We actually didn't tour much of the city of Scranton, but instead made out way to The Mall at Steamtown, which is a pretty average mall on the inside but it's inside what appears to be an old train station. The mall also has a pretty interesting parking garage where you can enter the department stores underground. In the food court (which features not only a Nathan's but also an Arthur Treacher's) there are advertisements for various local businesses including Dunder Mifflin, Inc.

The mall's center court was hosting Santa Claus. Around the giant Christmas tree were cutouts of two characters from the show, Kevin...

...and Angela.

Here we are outside the mall...

Here's the advertised Dunder Mifflin Store, which was actually only a cart...

Well played, Scranton Mall! Ok, so there is a Flintstone's Bedrock City Theme Park that I may have been to before in South Dakota, and I may have also considered taking a trip to Vermont to stay at the Inn used in the exterior shots of Newhart. But, this Office stuff was all pretty cool too!

Elephant Tragedy

My wife and I both received text messages today from friends informing us of a fire that had burned down Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum in nearby Orrtanna, PA. Mr. Ed's was a cherished old-school roadside attraction that has been featured in countless books, magazine articles and documentaries about wacky, tacky and off-beat tourist attractions.

My family and I are lucky enough that we had recently made the 35 min. trek out to Mr. Ed's on a beautiful afternoon this past spring. The little shack on the side of Rt. 30 housed thousands upon thousands of elephant items that the owner, Mr. Ed, had collected over the past 40+ years.

In addition to figures and stuffed animals there were old toys, promotion items, jewelry...anything you can imagine with an elephant on it! The collection was originally displayed in two very long rooms, but recently the collection had busted out of the museum and began to line the walls of the shop surrounding the Elephant Museum. In recent years, Mr. Ed also put some work into the outside of the museum where there were many large elephant statues as well as a beautiful fish pond and some neat little paths.

Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum was also home to a wonderful candy shop that sold all sorts of candy for very reasonable prices. All the standards were there, along with tons of hard to find candies and some old fashioned varieties that you just can't find anywhere else. On our most recent trip, my son was delighted to find a maple sugar cake, which we had read about in an old book.

Old fashioned, low-tech family attractions like Mr. Ed's are as common as they used to be...and that's a crying shame! The collection at Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum is truly irreplaceable. Luckily, Mr. Ed has already announced that he plans to rebuild and reopen his elephant mecca very soon. I will miss the original museum, but I also can't wait to see what Mr. Ed has in store for us next!

You can read a newspaper article about the fire: here.

There's also this photo page that I made after my first visit in 2005, which can be viewed by clicking here!

House of Straw

My wife and I recently spent an extended weekend in the Bahamas on beautiful Grand Bahama Island. Mrs. South was a bridesmaid in a beautiful beach wedding, we also took a tour on a glass bottom boat and enjoyed some fine local cuisine. One of the highlights of our trip was spending the day at Port Lucaya Marketplace which is a neat little shopping complex made up of little shops, eateries, and bars. One of the other attractions at the Marketplace is known as the Straw Market.

If you've been to the more famous Straw Market in nearby Nassau you haven't experienced quite the same thing as the markets in Grand Bahama. In Nassau the markets are filled with rip-offs of designer handbags and other name brand goods. In Grand Bahama the markets are way more low key. There are over 100 little booths where islanders sell handmade goods and other simple souvenirs like t-shirts and hats. One of the most popular items that you'll find for sale at almost every vendor are straw bags. They come in all shapes and sizes and each is handmade. You can find a bag decorated with almost anything you can think of. It was pretty cool to find tons of bags with the (unauthorized) likeness of several cartoon pals. Of course, I took some pics:

This vendor had a large assortment. We saw alot of Mickeys and Doras...this was the only place we saw Muppets and even Bratz.

This was one of the better looking Disney bags I found.

I was hoping to find a Flintstones bag and spotted this Wilma tucked away in the back of one booth. I took a picture and then turned around and found a Fred bag which instead of taking a picture of, I forked over ten bucks and bought it. I guess I could have taken a picture of it still, since it's sitting in my bedroom now, but for now just enjoy the Wilma.

True American History

Last weekend we visited the recently updated National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. Among the many historical artifacts found within the walls of this Smithsonian museum, I was delighted to find a piece of artwork featuring the first family of American history: The Flintstones...

And here's the description that accompanies the piece:

This Flintstones picture can be found in the Artifact Walls exhibit on the first floor of the museum.

On a slightly related note, I heard on a podcast interview with Adam Reed (the creator of Sealab 2010, Frisky Dingo and Archer) about an early job he had with Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera. One of his first assignments with the company was to watch every episode of The Flintstones and note which episodes did not contain dinosaurs. It turns out, a church was doing a cross promotion with a snack cake company giving away Flintstones videos, and the dinosaurs went against the beliefs of the church. I always get excited when I hear any little tid-bit about The Flintstones, but I thought this one was particularly funny. No matter what your religious belief system is, you certainly shouldn't be threatened by a silly, completely fictional cartoon show from the `60's. And if the thought of dinosaurs saying "It's a living!" while pulling elevators, acting as bridges and cranes offends you, than maybe your church should pick another cartoon to give out free videos of! "It's a living!"

Hampton Landmarks

If you've ever stayed at a Hampton Inn than you know that they decorate the property with numerous black and white photos of everyday American life. Not only are there photos on the walls, but they use them on room keys, room number plates, elevators...anywhere they can. It's kind of like staying in a giant Jones Soda bottle. The photo of the photo above was taken in an elevator at the Hampton Inn in Portage, Michigan. (I didn't snap it...I just found it on Facebook.) The picture is, of course, of The Little Red School House at Maryland's own Enchanted Forest. Pretty neat to see the little park represented all the way out in Michigan. The picture shows the school house being refurbished and repaired for it's new home at Clark's Elioak Farm. Ya see, Hampton Inn has a program they call Hampton Landmarks where the company (Hilton) donates time and money to fixing up local historical landmarks. It turns out Paris' daddy forked over a nice chunk of change to help get the Enchanted Forest back on it's feet. Like I said, it's pretty neat to be out in Michigan (or anywhere away from home) and see a little piece of the Enchanted Forest taking an elevator ride with ya!

It's An Obscure Ride, Charlie Brown

I've mentioned before not to ask me why I search for the stuff I do on YouTube, but one of my favorite subjects to find videos of is cartoon themed amusement park rides in other countries. I recently discovered a place called Snoopy's World, an outdoor playground which can be found on a balcony of a 49 acre mall in Hong Kong called New Town Plaza. This place actually looks more like the kids section of an amusement park than it does a simple playground. There's some play areas for the kids and some shops and even an eatery...and it's all surrounded by giant statues of Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang. What caught my eye is the playground's boat ride, which appears to just be called Boating Canal. I gotta tell ya...the ride looks pretty sweet. Guests board a canoe with Beagle Scout Snoopy as your guide as you travel through a few Peanuts inspired scenes. Here's an overview of the ride:

It's kind of simple looking but you gotta applaud what they're trying to do.

Now, here's the video that tipped me off on this whole Snoopy's World venture. This clip is just someone's private home video but it shows off the scenes of the ride nicely. Just give the video 20 or so seconds to get to the footage of the ride...



I'm not quite sure what any of that really has to do with Snoopy...especially the scene where Snoopy reenacts Saving Private Ryan, but I'd be willing to hop on an 18 hour flight to Hong Kong - just to check it out!

In Sweden They Do Christmas Right

My friend Andy pointed me to this very interesting article about Donald Duck and his major role in Sweden's Christmas traditions. The article is called Nordic Quack: Sweden's Bizarre Tradition of Watching Donald Duck Cartoons on Christmas Eve. Apparently, every year on Christmas Eve the country comes to a stand still so that everybody can watch a telecast of a 1959 Christmas themed episode of Wonderful World of Disney. If you ask me, that's the way to celebrate any holiday! Read the article for all the details of this neat custom that is a sacred tradition with families in Sweden.

As a die-hard Disney fan, I was surprised that I had never heard of this ritual. I was so intrigued by it that I actually went searching on line and found a few photos related to the tradition...

Here's an authentic Swedish family sitting down at 3:00pm to watch the annual airing of Sverige, Kalle Anka och hans vänner önskar God Jul.

Every year a different actor plays the role of Walt Disney and introduces the show. It's nice that even though Sweden has only had television since the late 50's they too have upgraded their broadcast system to HD.

Back From The Beach `09

We spent a week at the ocean. We brought our laptop so I figured I would update the blog while we were there but then I never felt like doing it. So now we're back in the WWoB offices and the fun and mirth can continue! We were in Ocean City, MD for one whole week. We had a great time. Quite a few friends of ours were down there the same time we were. Some planned it that way, others we ran into! The weather was hot and beachy with highs of 103. The actual beach part of the beach continues to be my children's least favorite part of the beach experience. They prefer the mini-golf, candy stores and rides and quite frankly that's fine with us. We spent a lot of time at the pool and many evenings strolling the boardwalk listening to the sounds of the ocean and a guy wearing a cardboard box painted like Spongebob Squarepants and playing the banjo. Life is good!

One of the new attractions at Ocean City that we were looking forward to checking out is The Pirates Plunder Museum and Gift Shop on 26th St. With all the same ideas repeated over and over in Ocean City...it's nice when something original and different opens up. This little museum is small and doesn't have a whole lot to offer but at $3 bucks a head (kids 10 and under are free) it's worth the price. There are plenty of pirate artifacts on display such as weapons and treasures, and there is a bounty of information to be had in this small space. Who knew Blackbeard the pirate had a home and a wife right here on the East Coast of Maryland!? The museum offers lots of photo opportunities and it even has a small theatre that runs a very fascinating National Geographic film about Blackbeard. There's a large gift shop attached with all sorts of pirate goodies to take home including toy weapons which happens to be the very favorite item of one of my own little crew members and believe me, he left a happy little pirate! And yes, in case you were wondering, the soundtrack to Pirates of the Carribean was playing the entire time we were there!

Of course, eating plays a big role in a visit to the beach. For me, and many others, nothing is better than a serving or three of Thrasher's Fries. I also visited the wonderful Dough Roller for my beloved Pizza Omelet and traveled over the state line into Delaware for my newest favorite pizza in the world: Grotto Pizza.
I also established two new food traditions; a Peanut Butter Fudge and Banana milkshake at Dumsers and Kohr Bros. banana frozen custard with chocolate sprinkles! That's flavor country, my friends. We also hit up other favorites like The Bonfire, Tequila Mockingbird, Phillips Seafood, Big Peckers and Harpoon Hanna's. Oh, and the kids dragged us into at least a dozen Candy Kitchens.

A highlight of the trip for me was finally getting to ride the Haunted Mansion ride on Rehoboth Beach's boardwalk. Rehoboth Beach is about a 20 minute drive from Ocean City but offers a completely different beach experience. Rehoboth has a small amusement park called Funland which operates a handful of rides in a tightly packed but beautiful little area. Their Haunted Mansion is considered one of the best dark rides in the country. It only opens at 6:30pm so the lines are very long. I've tried to ride it two other years and waiting in a long line isn't an option when you've got two little ones with you. This year, I went back and checked on the line near the end of the night and there was no wait. I bought my $1.50 worth of tickets and walked right on this legendary ride. Unlike most Haunted Houses, this one's cars suspend from the track and the whole ride is actually upstairs from the loading area. It's a really cool ride filled with all sorts of old fun house gags and props collected from other classic dark rides. One of the highlights of the ride is the "Peeing Skeleton". Sounds charming, don't it!? It's a great ride which I hope I get to do again soon!

On the way home from Ocean City, we decided to make a small detour and visit Cheeseburger in Paradise in Pasadena, MD. There used to be a CIP not to far from our home, but it closed down about two years ago. We've often talked about making the 75-90 minute drive down to the next nearest location, but sole Maryland operation ended up only being about 10 minutes out of our way on our return trip. We were so happy to be back. Cheeseburger in Paradise has the best sliders - hands down! They also have lots of yummy island inspired dishes and drinks and you get to chow down while listening to Jimmy Buffet tunes. It was a great conclusion to a fun (and calorie) filled week!