King's Dominion

The next place on my travels takes me to King's Dominion in Richmond, VA. I am not big on amusement parks, but I did enjoy this one, but that was about 20 years ago. I would never go there now.

The highlights there were the replica Eiffel Tower and the Super Slide. This slide was enormous, nothing like the ones at the local fair.

Niagara Falls

The third place that I visited was Niagara Falls. I was first there in 1984 and I lost track after the 9th visit. The Canadian falls is much nicer and the Canadian side is also much cleaner.

The best part of visiting Niagara Falls is walking over the Rainbow Bridge from New York into Canada. The whole thing of walking to another country is awesome.

I have yet to go on the Maid of the Mist boat tour. Maybe next time I will have to give that a try. My favorite thing there was going to the top of Skylon Tower and seeing the panoramic view of the falls. That is where 2 of these pictures were taken from. The third picture was taken from a nature trail that brushes up against the falls on the American side.

Sea World

The second place that I visited was to Sea World in Aurora, OH. This trip was in the summer of 1981 and it was organized by my church. It was a great place for a kid and it probably still is, too bad it's closed now.

One of my pet peeves is when I ask someone about a vacation and what they did there and I get the response, "I don't remember!". Well, I was there 26 years ago and I still remember feeding a dolphin. They had this machine that took quarters and you would get a fish resembling sardines that the dolphins would eat. They came out of the water and took it so gently from the people and they seemed to smile.

Also, we saw this awesome show with Shamu. He would jump out of the water and do flips then splash the first few rows. Then he would jump thru rings and would let a worker ride on his back for a few minutes.

Sorry, I only have 1 picture to post, every picture my mom had was of Shamu.

First Baseball Game

The first time I ever left the Johnstown area was to Pittsburgh for my first Pirates game. According to the back of the pictures, it was July 6, 1980. That would make me 7 years old.

I can actually remember a lot from that day. The game went 20 innings, the Pirates played the Chicago Cubs, Omar Moreno had the game winning hit, I saw my hero at the time, Willie Stargell play, our seats were in left-center field, and Bert Blyleven started the game for the Pirates. I remember thinking that Three Rivers Stadium was enormous, but what 7 year old wouldn't?

Now, 27 years later, I am not even much of a Pirates fan. But a first baseball game is very special to a kid and I have never forgotten it.

By the way, it's not appropriate to laugh at a 7 year old's pictures......