Maple Valley Days

Last weekend was Maple Valley Days, so we hiked down to Lake Wilderness to check it all out. Colin even invited his friend Luke to come along with us. I tell you, every year we go down there, we expect to find a new & improved celebration and every year we come away thinking, "That's it?" As much as the town has grown in the past few years, you would think that Maple Valley Days would get better too.

The carnival section has a total of 12 rides for the kids, 2 being for crazy teenagers, 6 being for little kids and not a whole lot of in between. Colin and Luke managed to find a couple rides to do, including the ferris wheel, bumper cars and the giant slide. I suppose it's a good thing that there aren't too many rides, because it was 5 whole dollars for one person to ride the bumper cars! Did they not get the memo re: the recession?! Not to mention the fact that both the rides and the operators looked a little worse for wear. I prayed every time the boys got on a ride! Please, Lord, deliver them from evil...


The food booths weren't much better, in fact, they were the same as last year. And, unless you enjoy corn dogs, hot dogs or scary looking Asian food, you weren't in for a treat. I managed by getting a gyro, but I certainly have had better. Dessert wasn't that tasty either. Colin did fine with his Hawaiian shaved ice, I mean you really can't screw up ice & sugar syrup. The rest of us wanted elephant ears. Bad choice. It was like eating heavily greased paper with a hint of sugar.

Probably the worst part of Maple Valley Days was the arts & crafts booths. Unfortunately there weren't many arts & crafts, rather people trying to sell you stuff like windows, DirecTV, decking materials, insurance, and Mary Kay. "You need to sign up for our raffle to win $1,000 worth of crap you don't really need!" Yea, and then when I don't win, you'll call me obsessively or send me a bunch of junk mail. No thanks!

One bright spot was watching the remote control hydroplane races being run on the lake. Before one of the races, there was a momma duck and her 4 teenaged duckies that were making their way onto the course. One racer cleverly chased them out of the way with his little boat, although to the ducks it was probably like being chased by the real-sized Oh Boy Oberto! They got out of the way pretty fast.

On our way home, we noticed some news vans in the parking lot. We thought, "It must be a slow news day, if the media is out here covering Maple Valley Days." Later on we found out that we were the news. Apparently the night before, a teenager had drown after trying to swim across the lake at 9pm. How sad! I think next year we'll just save our money for the Puyallup Fair or better yet, just go to Disneyland!