Monday, January 30, 2012

The Mystery Spot

I love it when a holiday comes around. The kids & THE HUBBY gets out of school. For Martin Luther King's Birthday, Trek & I took the kids up to Santa Cruz to
"The Mystery Spot."
It was in a beautiful area of the Redwoods, & though it was freezing cold, it was fun.


I've been to places like this before, but the kids haven't & they thought it was the coolest thing they had ever seen before. At the bottom of the hill they had a level slab of concrete where nothing LOOKED level at all. Then we hiked up this little hill, but it felt like you were climbing a steep mountain. It was crazy how hard it was to go up.

At the top of the walk there was a cabin that someone had built many years ago that had literally slid down the mountain & hit a large redwood tree. The pull of gravity on this hill was SO off. It was really bizarre. You CANNOT stand upright because it feels wrong. Gravity is pulling you down & it took ALL YOUR ENERGY to stay upright.


It was bizarre. There was a piece of wood that LOOKED like it was going DOWN into the cabin, but when you put a level on it, it was completely level. But when you put a ball on it, the ball rolled UPWARD & OUT of the cabin. At first I thought it was a trick ball, but then the tour guide did the same demonstration with a water bottle (rolled UP) & then poured water on the board. I about died when the water ROLLED UP & off the high end of the board. It was SO STRANGE.


Then we went INSIDE the cabin which made everyone laugh. My first instinct was to throw up everywhere. The actual pull of gravity literally was making me lose my lunch. Poor little Bladen didn't know how to deal with it & kept falling into the wall. He learned you can't fight with gravity & win. ha ha ha.


It was really weird standing on a completely level floor, but be standing at an angle because you felt like something was going to pull you to the floor. Or you could have been like Bladen & just stood with your face in the wall because you couldn't move period. The best way to describe it was like being on the "Gravitron" ride from a carnival. You literally had NO CONTROL of your body.



Because of the gravitational pull in the cabin, you are able to bend backwards without falling over. Cadence was LOVING this.


Trek was the only one of us that wasn't feeling nauseous. He was having a blast playing on everything.



The last area of the tour was the kids' favorite part. They had a bench that looks off balance, but was completely level. They had 5 kids stand on the bench from shortest to tallest. You could very visibly see the height difference between them all. Lorien was the center kid. She was SO excited to be part of a demonstration.


Then they had the kids change places to show that even though the bench is completely level, somehow it's NOT. Now the tallest kid looks like the shortest & the shortest is the tallest.


They did the same demonstration with adults & I was chosen to be a shorty. Surprise, surprise.



At the end there was one more area that was similar to the last area. It had a slab of concrete that was completely LEVEL, but had the same effect. First Cadence is taller, then Lorien is.



Cadence wanted to takes pictures of Trek & I doing it as well.



We all got "Mystery Spot" bumper stickers & we let each of the kids get a treat at the gift shop before we left for home. It was a fun little afternoon for us. I'm glad we have holidays every now & again that allow us to have fun little adventures as a family.

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