Great Wolf Lodge - Grand Mound, Washington

I have just had the experience of a lifetime! I just turned thirteen on January thirty-first, and what a tim,e I had. The thirty-first was on a Sunday, and I thought I was just gonna have a long, lazy, boring weekend, then have a small party with my parents and sister on Sunday. On Saturday afternoon, I was sorting through my Portland Auto Shaow brochures (another post!), when my sister came into my room. Aparently I had the door closed, because everyone was running around packing. Well, she came in and told me to pack a duffel; we were going on a drive. Well, I don't normally take a duffel bag on a "drive," so I did a double-take. I asked where we were going more than several times, but nobody would tell me! I swore they were taking me off to military school (one of my greatest fears, by the way), but my parents and sister also had bags. All I got out of my sister was "Oh, there's a pool, so take a swimsuit." I was so dumbfounded that my sister ended up packing my bag! How crazy is that, having my almost-twenty-five-year-old sister pack my bags? My dad and I dropped off our dog at the dogsitter, which means we weren't planning on coming back for a time. All my family said to me We drove for what seemed like hours, so I whatched a movie (We took the van, so that was possible.). I thought we were in southern Oregon!! HA! We were creeping up through Washington state! When we were getting close, I took a rest, and the only sign I saw the whole trip was a milage posting for Seattle, Tacoma, and Olympia. I really don't know why that didn't click; maybe I was just sleepy.


Boy, was I in for a whopping surprise!! Shortly thereafter, we pulled our minivan into the parking lot of the biggest, nicest resort I have ever seen! The Great Wolf Lodge! We went inside and I practically toppled over!! There were hundreds of people milling around, and probably three hundred more in the great room!
I looked to me and my sister (who had also never been there before) like the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California, only with an entire theme park in the back!!! There where hundreds of thousands of gallons of water in that room (around 350,000 the brochure said), and it was sheer amazement as we stood in front of that plate glass with our mouths hanging open. We reluctantly pried away by our pents and taken to our hotel room, the twentieth room on the fourth floor.

It was well-furnished, with two qween beds for my parents and sister, and a hidaway bed for me. The was a fridge and a sink...all the normal stuff, and a fourth-story-view of the landscape (including the parking lot). The hotel was an extrodinary, unfathamable feat of engineering and architecture!! Firstoff, it was major, major Craftsman, my favorite! Second, it was the hugest resort I 've ever been in! The Embassy Suites would bow to this! I can barely even explain this. Whoa, it was just huge.


The waterpark flabbergasted me the most, though. There were three main pools, holding in almost three hundred, fifty, thousand, gallons of water. There was a wave pool, a kiddie pool, and another pool for kids around my age. There were also pools where the four slides came out, but in the middle of all of theis was this gigantic play structure with all of these water-associated boobie-traps. A the the top were two slides that twist and turn to ground-level. On top of it was what the Great Wolf is famous for: the bucket - a one tousand gallon bucket that fills with water and pours out on whoever in on the structure - it was SO AWESOME!!! There were also four major slides; two that were the perfect size to go to by myself, and two huge ones. One of them was new, it was really fun! The other one - oh Lord - it gives me shivers thinking about it!
You could drive my sister's Subaru Forester in the mouth of it, and flip a semi over in the freaking middle!!! Fist time, I went with my sister. We waited in line for 15-20 minutes, and were then seated in a four-man raft. She went down backwards that time. She was brave. The beginning was nice - come the sixty-foot dropoff, uh, I wasn't doin' so hot then - I screamed the entire way down, and Katie thought it was hilarious! So do I, now. I won't even describe the rest. It was a heart-stopping ride-Lord-I'll say that for sure! I will say, that on January thirty-first, 2010, at 12:31 in the afternoon, I turned thirteen, goin' down the "Howlin' Tornado" all right! I'm proud of that day!

The wave pool had two settings: waves like in a nice lake, those were fun, and title wave - throwing people and their innertubes this way and that! My sister got slight motion sickness, but my dad and I loved it! The kiddie pool was kinda fun, along with the third pool, but I spent most of my time in the wave pool.

The hotel was amazing architecture - Google it for some more good pictures, or visit one yourself!!

To make it easier, just click on the title of this post to visit Great Wolf Lodge's Website!!

- Herbie131