Here is my vacation note for this summer. Susan and I did an “Amusement Park” tour of THREE parks in a week. We started off going to “Worlds of Fun” in Kansas City on the 4th of July, complete with fireworks. We then headed to Branson, MO and Silver Dollar City for three days (this is one of the places we honeymooned). We have to say this amusement park was the best of the three parks. The park is built into the middle of a forest, so even though the temperatures were above 90 degrees, we still kept comfortable. While there we went on the Branson Belle, a show boat, for our 26th anniversary. The show was wonderful and it was a great sunset view from the top deck on Table Top Lake.
On Thursday, July 7th, while still in Branson, we got a call from our son, Brian, who is studying in London this summer. All the students from Iowa State happened to be on a field trip to the Rolls Royce Plant the day of the bombings. He called us to say he was OK, and that the college cancelled all travel for the weekend, the weekend he was supposed to visit the friends we have in Telford, halfway between Birmingham and Manchester. Unfortunately for Brian, he will be unable to get up to see them on this trip to England since classes are done tomorrow. It was really a same, since Brian wanted to have some R & R the last weekend before finals this week. We are just thankful that none of the Iowa State students were involved in the terrorist attacks in London. Our hearts go out to our British friends and people of London, the place where just one year ago to the day, Susan and I were getting on the tube at that same King’s Cross station. Isn’t that a scary thought!
We finished our tour by coming home and going to Adventureland in Des Moines with park passes from my company, who was hosting a company park day. There were many roller coaster rides this week, and lots of splashes in raging rivers and log flumes. We had a very relaxing week.
Hope everyone else’s vacations go well, and nobody else gets a phone call halfway through with a scare like we did.
Keep in touch.
Mark Ferguson