How do you best celebrate your second anniversary, especially when it falls on the first day of winter?
Google says that the traditional second-anniversary gift is cotton while the modern present is china.
Neither of those, however, seemed like the type of gift I was looking for to give my wife last month as we celebrated our second anniversary. We both have more cotton clothes than we need, and the last time I checked our kitchen cabinets were full of plates, glasses and utensils.
We tend to find more value in experiences such as day trips, as travel is one of our favorite pastimes.
I spent a couple of weeks lingering in ambiguity as I tried to figure out what type of day trip we could make in winter. On Thanksgiving Day, however, it hit me as we were watching one of my favorite holiday movies — “Christmas Vacation.”
We laughed multiple times as we watched Clark Griswold try to give his family the best Christmas ever only to have one problem after the other.
In one scene, Griswold and Cousin Eddie take the kids sledding. Griswold decides to apply a new product that his company has developed to the bottom of his saucer to make it slippery and increase the sled’s speed.
By the time Griswold dodged trees, crossed an interstate and came to stop in a Wal-Mart parking lot, I had the perfect idea for a second-year anniversary gift.
As I watched that scene, my mind drifted to Pokagon State Park and its famous attraction that lures some 90,000 people a year to experience a 30-second adrenaline rush.
Chances are you probably know where I’m going with this idea even though I had never been to Pokagon to experience the famous refrigerated toboggan run.
As I read more about it, I knew it would be the perfect day trip for a second-anniversary gift.
What’s not to love about bundling up in warm cotton attire, climbing a 30-foot tower in December, hopping on a toboggan that rests on a refrigerated track, and speeding down a one-quarter mile course with dips and valleys while trying to break the park’s top recorded speed of 42 mph?
It took just a few clicks to order a toboggan-run gift certificate and have it mailed to me so that I could wrap it to give to my wife on our anniversary.
Jen was surprised when we exchanged gifts. I think her response was something along the lines of, “I never would have guessed that.”
She had been to Pokagon once before to go down the toboggan slide but it had been more than 25 years ago.
I bought a pass to use the toboggan slide for an hour thinking that would let us go down three or four times.
Rookie mistake one.
Our sister-in-law and 5-year-old niece joined us as we ventured north Dec. 30 for an adventure down one of the few refrigerated toboggan slides in the Midwest.
When we arrived, however, it became clear that the rest of northeast Indiana had the same idea, as the line to ride the toboggan was about as long as those at Cedar Point. My vision of riding three or four times during our hourlong visit quickly went away, as the people behind us shared it was about an hour wait.
We quickly made friends with the people in front of us from California who were visiting family in Michigan. They had driven down with their kids and Michigan family to spend the afternoon tobogganing as well.
After 50 minutes of chatting with our new friends, we were at the top of the 30-foot tower looking down over the dips, valleys and vertical drop.
The toboggans — which you rent by the hour (not the ride) and carry up the tower — can hold up to four riders, so we all squeezed into one — a tight fit for three adults and a 5-year-old.
Rookie mistake two.
A few seconds later, we were flying down the run and letting out the occasional scream as we increased speed. I think I saw more of the sky than the track, as I was in the back and leaning back and up more due to how crowded we were on the toboggan.
We didn’t break the speed record of 42 mph and only squeezed in one ride due to the long line but had a blast on the 30-second toboggan experience.
We decided to head home afterward, as waiting in line for another hour didn’t seem too fun.
Rookie mistake three.
Shortly after we got on I-69, traffic came to a stop and didn’t move more than a few hundred feet for 90 minutes due to two separate accidents in front of us. It was a classic Griswold-style way to end our December toboggan anniversary adventure.
Google says that the traditional material for the third anniversary gift is leather. Perhaps I’ll order my wife some leather gloves for our trip back to Pokagon for next year’s anniversary, as I think a new tradition might have been born.
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
