Good Morning Silver Dollar City! Before we head in, let's go over how we got here!

After leaving Southern California at about 5:00am, we found ourselves in Winslow Arizona in the early afternoon.

Over the years my son has pretty much learned to just go with the flow on roadside destinations.

No road trip is without it's issues, and somewhere in New Mexico this happened. Thankfully this was the biggest issue we had in the entire 2,900 mile trip. I'll take it!

On the suggestion of a friend, we drove a couple of miles from our hotel to Tomasita's. It was definitely worth it as you'll see below.

When in New Mexico, the Chile's are a requirement.

The next morning it was a "very little" driving day, but not before morning coffee. We had no idea WhiteWater was a 2 minute walk from our hotel!! Next time!

Ok, back to where we started this!

Yay for no driving!

The park was kind enough to hook us up with tickets, some front of the line passes if we needed them and a coupon for Cinnamon Bread!! They are amazing!

My jail buddy!

A must on any hot day, and it was! It was also Gospel Fest and we worried that the park would be rather busy. There were a lot of people, but the ride lines were quite manageable all day.

Our first stop of course ...

Love the queue!

This was the longest wait we had all day for Time Traveler. Seriously.

I absolutely love the queue for this

Silver Dollar City utilizes their terrain better than any other park, ever. At least that I've visited. As such, it's hard to get a lot of pics of their coasters.

We honestly weren't sure what to expect out of a spinning ride that has inversions, but we both loved it. This is a top 10 coaster for me!

Right next door is Thunderation, the parks Arrow mine train, which also uses the terrain amazingly well.

Will be honest, it took us a bit to figure out the layout of the park, but here's a nice shot of Mystic River Falls, which opened later in the day. We'll get back to this.

We headed over to Powder Keg, which did NOT disappoint!

Have I mentioned how gorgeous this park is?

Due to 1-train ops we used the first of our skip the line passes here. And got a front-seat ride for our first trip of the day. In fact, other than Mystic River Falls, this was the only attraction we used our skip the lines on. That's how great ops are at this park. Even on a busy day.

Fire in the Hole!! This is such a fun classic ride, and as we discovered later in the day, a surprising bump of airtime in the back!

Have I mentioned how gorgeous this park is?

Heading over to Wildfire after a spin on the log flume!

What's going on over here Silver Dollar City?

It'll be something amazing for sure!

Unfortunately after lunch there was some lightning in the area, so most of the outside attractions were shut down for the better part of 2 hours. On the bright side, this gave us a chance to check out some other parts of the park we may have missed!

Starting with Grandfather's Mansion!

This reminded me a bit of the Haunted Shack at Knott's.

John did not answer

Just what nobody asked for ever, many Gregg's.

We also visited the Flooded Mine!

We're definitely real close pals

Love the individual outfits for each ride at the park. Definitely not something we were expecting.

Let's head into the mine!

The ride reminded me a bit of the Calico Mine Ride at Knott's only on a boat. TBH, I didn't think the gun gimmick was needed, and as you'll see from the POV below I didn't really use the gun for the entire ride. But it was great fun!

During the lightning delay we also checked out the kids area, which we probably wouldn't have done otherwise.

Really well themed and the kids seemed to love it.

We also headed over to the Grand Exposition!

Oddly enough, the Disk-O was open, so we took a spin! It was a good one!

Finally, after the delay the rides started to reopen! So we started with Powder Keg! Had an awesome back-seat ride this time!

And finally Outlaw Run opened for the day after some issues earlier. Our first ground-up RMC did NOT disappoint. And then it was time for Mystic River Falls!

What better way to dry off after Mystic River Falls than a front-row ride on Outlaw Run?

And then of course, it was Cinnamon Bread time!! It was amazing!

We had planned on ending our day with the Marvel Cave so before we decided to take a few more rides on Time Traveler, yes, this was the wait. Sadly, we missed the last Cave tour by about 10 minutes. Next time. And there WILL be a next time!

Kind of hard to get a selfie here!

I'd driven by on I-44 before, but had never stopped. It's great to see up close.

Hey Illinois!!

And here is where we leave you for today. We'll have another update tomorrow from our epic 2-days at Cedar Point! You won't want to miss it!