This week we took a long weekend vacation to the Wisconsin Dells. More details on what a great time we had a little later. We were leaving early Thurs. morning and I was trying to take off Wednesday from work in order to try to get packed up for the trip. I was trying to cram a lot of work into Monday and Tuesday which I knew would be hectic and not very conducive for fitting in a workout. For that reason as well as the fact that I was way off on my goals the week before, I decided to just concentrate on my step goal of 10,000 average daily steps.
I didn’t quite make it, but I actually did better than I expected with a total of 61,772 and an average of 8,824 daily steps.
Here’s a record of my activity for the week.
- Sunday: 1.5 mile walk
- Monday: I had a new person start at work, so I played tour guide quite a bit back and forth between our buildings and got 7,000 steps in during the day, then I did a 1 mile walk in the evening to get my 10,000 steps in for the day.
- Tuesday – nada
- Wednesday: 30 minutes elliptical, 30 minutes weight training
- Thursday: Lots of walking during site seeing and exploring our resort.
- Friday: Exploring our resort, a full day at the water park and a 1.5 mile walk.
- Saturday: Site seeing including some canyon walks and a few hours at the water park.
I honestly got more steps in than I anticipated on vacation. Knowing I was close, I wish I would have eeked out a few more though. I likely had a few thousand more on Friday and Saturday since I couldn’t actually wear my Fitbit at the water parks except walking to and from since the Fitbit isn’t waterproof.
We left on Thursday morning and I was surprised that i’d get even close to my goal that day with spending over 6 hours in the car. Once we crossed the Iowa/Wisconsin border we started seeing signs for some tourist attractions my husband had visited as a kid, so we decided to stop and show them to Carter. It was a great way to break up the trip. The first one was a Boeing C-97 air freighter in Dodgeville, WI that you could walk up and inside. Carter loves planes and it was also a good way to burn off some energy running down the hill.
The second place we stopped was a few miles up the road called The House On the Rock. I’d never heard of it and I assumed it was just a house built on a rock. My husband had been there as a kid and didn’t really let on what it was. We paid our fee to do the tour and 2 hours later we had walked through 2 of the 3 sections of this museum of sorts. It was indeed a house built on a rock, but it really was an enormous collection of just about everything. I didn’t get very many good pictures because it was pretty dark inside. It might be the most random place I’ve ever been. Interesting, but random! It did help me get in quite a few steps.
Here are pictures of the infinity room and the carousel room.
On to our vacation, we stayed at the Wilderness Territory just outside of the Wisconsin Dells. The dells are about a 6 hour drive from Des Moines. This was our first time there as a family, although my husband and I had both been there as kids. If you’re not familiar with the Wisconsin Dells, it boasts an unparalleled amount of water parks. Our resort had eight of its own water parks, 4 indoor and 4 outdoor, which are only open to guests of the resort. the campus is huge and while they do have a shuttle, we preferred to walk. Here’s just a part of the map, courtesy of the Wilderness website to show you what I’m talking about.
We had a great experience at the resort. It was recommended to us by friends and it had good reviews on many travel sites. It’s very friendly and well kept. We spent about a day and a half at the water parks on property and still didn’t get to them all. I think we ended up at 5 of the 8.
Here’s my husband and son coming down one of the slides.
Carter had watched a video of the resort and the one thing he wanted to do more than anything was to play laser tag. It only lasted about 8 minutes and the vest was gigantic on him, but he had a blast. So did we!
While quite a bit of the Wisconsin Dells is very touristy, we tried to take in a few that were also a little more related to the history and beauty of the Dells. These were the Original Duck Tours and the Dells Boat Tours. The Ducks are a vehicle that go on land and water. Carter thought that was pretty cool. The boat tour allowed us to hear some of the history of the area and see rock formations and some of the canyons and gulches that make up the Dells along the Wisconsin River.
That’s a wrap on our vacation. I’m happy to have gotten some activity in, but nothing high intensity. After eating terribly while on vacation I really need to get more active this week AND eat well, so my goals next week will be to hit my 10,000 per day goal and track my food via My Fitness Pal.
