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• Other places to splash down
• Gallery: Dave Trippin' to the Great Wolf Lodge

MASON, Ohio -- Walking down the hallway at Great Wolf Lodge with the boys last weekend, I stopped and savored the rare winter sound -- the clip-clop of flip-flops.

Ahhhh. Like an echo off a distant sun-drenched canyon, that soothing sound of summer calling was just what we needed.

With another menacing blob of snow ready to blanket the Tri-State, the Dave Trippin' crew loaded up the swimsuits and headed west to Cincinnati to take February out like a Great Wolf.

While West Virginia is blessed with great skiing with five downhill resorts, and while Kentucky has a world to be found underground in the great caves from Mammoth Cave to Carter Caves, the winter-whipped Buckeye State has taken a cue from Buckeye Chuck (the state groundhog) and has burrowed inside.

In the past few years, Ohio has built a waterpark wonderland with eight indoor waterparks near the amusement park meccas of Sandusky and Cincinnati as well as Columbus.

One of the largest and closest to the Tri-State is Great Wolf Lodge (www.greatwolf.com) that sits like a giant Lincoln-log-looking fortress of fun perched within view of the giant coasters of Kings Island.

Like a Peter Pan-designed hotel, Great Wolf, opened in late 2006, is a seemingly never-ending neverland of fun with its main attraction -- Bear Track Landing, a 79,000-square-foot water park featuring a dozen waterslides, six pools and a four-story treehouse waterfort.

When we rolled up to the Great Wolf (about a three-hour drive from Huntington) we immediately felt right at home.

Nice to see that the Lavenders aren't the only ones still sporting a little Christmas decoration as the giant log structure was still adorned with three giant Christmas wreaths.

Frankly, we didn't care if the Halloween decorations were still up, after weeks of frosty temps we were taking the sage advice of fellow Huntingtonian, Vince Hebert, who had just got back from the lodge with his two kids -- "Drive to Great Wolf, park your car, and don't go back outside."

Heeding Hebert's advice we ventured into the North Woods-themed family resort home to 401 all-suite guest rooms, a full-service spa, fitness center, themed restaurants and a 7,000 square-foot arcade in addition to the water park.

With another snowstorm turning the parking lot's cars into what looked like a bag of marshmallows below, and with the temperatures staying below 20, we didn't go outside for two days.

Although the kids-themed rooms are pretty amazing (kids bunk down in cave, wolf den or kids cabin theme rooms), there's a ton of activities that keep the kids constantly roaming the hallways of this magical, mystical lodge.

Before we even made it inside the waterpark, the kids discovered MagiQuest, one of the world's first live action fantasy adventure games that is played inside the hotel's mural-painted hallways divided into such areas as Whispering Woods.

Set up throughout the hallways and lobbies of the third and fourth floors, MagiQuest lets kids get in touch with their inner Harry Potter, using wands to tromp around on various quests, opening treasure chests along the way, talking to trees and fairies, lighting up crystals and battling ogres and dragons.

During this last weekend of the Olympics, it gave new meaning to the phrase "going for gold" as we logged hours and probably dozens of miles going up and down the staircases trying to keep up with our wild little wizards in training, who woke up at the crack of dawn to begin the Quest again.

A tip for those going to Great Wolf, it's dang near impossible to resist the temptation of the quest, so on advice from Vince we got a Paw Pass for the kids to share.

Although an extra $60, the Paw Pass allowed the kids to play the MagiQuest all weekend, get tokens for the arcade, as well as decorate a T-shirt and pillowcase, stuff an animal to take home, and get a giant drink and souvenir cup in the water park.

For wee tots, the lodge's Grand Lobby has a sweet animatronic musical show with a little boy Simon, his Indian friend, Yellow Feather, and a chorus of singing moose, squirrels and other critters that takes place in front of the giant three-story clock tower, whose time is told by two giant feathers.

Top that off with the arcade, unique restaurants like the Camp Critter Bar and Grille, where the fam can eat inside a booth enclosed by a tent, you could arguably not even hit the waterpark and have a great time.

For waterdogs of all ages, Bear Track Landing, the indoor water park, is an amazing place to splash down.

Open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on the weekends, you can get in more water play than an otter in the park's 12 water slides that includes the new one-of-a-kind five-story waterslide, the Triple Twist (which was scheduled to open March 4), as well as a water roller coaster ride, a cannon bowl tube, three tube slides and a couple body slides.

Not unlike its summer-time neighbor King's Island, the sheer size of the water park is impressive and can be overwhelming as there are six pools, including a nice lazy river, a wave pool, a zero-depth entry (for wee tots), a family whirlpool and an adult whirlpool.

One of the boys' favorite things was Fort MacKenzie, an interactive treehouse waterfort that featured dozens of water buckets, squirtguns, pipes that created a constant sprayground of fun. At the top, there were two smaller water slides for kids of all ages, and on the roof of Fort MacKenzie, the 1,000-gallon water bucket that was perpetually filled and dumped.

One of the great thing about Great Wolf is that adults sure haven't been left out in the cold, so to speak.

Opened in 2006, and one of a dozen Great Wolfs across North America, the lodge in Mason, has thought of it all from Grizzly Rob's tiki bar inside the waterpark to extra steps of convenience. For instance, a plastic wristband served as room key, waterpark admission and credit card for the weekend -- no going to a locker or rummaging through backpacks for always soggy dollars to buy an ice cream or drink at the pool.

That said, folks do have to realize that while the bands are so easy to use, and although goods inside are moderately priced (they had an $8.95 extra-large pizza) you can rack up a higher bill than Tiger Woods at a beauty pageant if you don't keep track of spending.

For families watching the budget (and who isn't?) the rooms come with good-sized refrigerators and microwaves so that you can cook some of your meals in the room if you'd like.

Another nice touch at Great Wolf is that they're the one of the first national hotel chains to be Green Seal certified, and since the Lavenders are green, it felt like home. There were recycling bins around the lodge, as well as in the room, low-flow showers, and a recirculation system in the pool that recycles most of the water.

The Lavender boys could have stayed at Great Wolf forever, but Sunday morning was coming down. The bill was slipped under the door and -- although you can stay at the waterpark for the whole day on your check-out day -- we were happily wiped out and water-logged. It was time to boogie back to the Tri-State.

Before we left Cincy, though, we couldn't resist a few more gallons of fun. OK, a million more gallons of fun.

We trucked over to the Southern Side of Cincinnati, and the Newport Aquarium, which like our oldest son Jake, is also turning 10.

Located on the banks of the Ohio River in the Newport on the Levee development, Newport Aquarium (www.newportquarium.com) was a wonderful winter stop where we spent hours staring at colorful worlds of tropical fish, jellyfish, sharks and the unique shark rays located in the aquarium's more than 70 exhibits and 14 galleries.

Luckily, we stopped by on the last day of the Aquarium's deal that two kids get in with one adult, so we all got in for about $44.

Before we could venture down the escalator and into the heart of the aquarium, we stood along with a hundred or so other folks who smashed together to see the Penguin Parade, during which three African penguins named, "Simon, Randy and Paula," (who knew they were still together) were rolled out across the red carpet entrance.

Then, as zoos and aquariums do so well, we found out in mere minutes more information than should be legal about those critters: Eight out of 18 penguin species live not in the Arctic but on the beach in warm climates, that they swim 16 miles an hour while Olympic swimming stud Michael Phelps swims eight mph, that these penguins can eat 40 fish a day, and that these little guys in the wild take a Nixon every 18 minutes then build a house out of their own scat.

Good Lord. Armed with way too much information and visuals about penguin lifestyles, we headed into the aquarium.

Not unlike the 10-year-old in our crew, the aquarium is still growing, and changing with several old exhibits being swapped out, and several of the new tunnel tanks being added.

We loved Frog Bog where kids could crawl through a play area that not only included a maze of tunnels and slides, but also little exhibits of frogs that only the kids could see from inside.

Like other regional aquariums such as Ripley's in the Smokey Mountains, Newport's calling card are the seamless see-through, acrylic tunnels.

They've got five that total more than 200 feet in length and none more impressive than "Surrounded by Sharks," whose 85 feet of tunnels give you a unique window into this 385,000-gallon tank filled with up to 10-foot Sand Tiger sharks, as well as Sandbar, Whitetip Reef, Blacktip Reef, Nurse, and Zebra sharks all peacefully swimming with Southern Singrays, Honeycomb Whiptail Rays, reef fish, a giant Loggerhead Sea Turtle and the aquarium's two unique Shark Rays, Sweet Pea and Scooter.

Like any trip to this Aquarium, you've gotta make a couple long stops at the art gallery-esque, Jellyfish Gallery where you can sit in the cool and the dark on comfy seats and watch framed aquariums of jellies and the sea nettles thread their way through the water.

With a Sunday slipping away, and with images of water slides and jellyfish glides dancing in our heads we finally, went back outside, pulled the ol' swagger wagon onto the AA and headed home.

Like Will, our 7-year-old, had said when he came out of Great Wolf, "I forgot all about winter."

Dave Lavender writes about entertainment for The Herald-Dispatch. You can reach him at lavender@herald-dispatch.com.

The Herald-Dispatch

Ohio has eight indoor waterparks. The closest and largest is Great Wolf Lodge in Mason, Ohio, home to a 93,000-square-foot indoor entertainment area featuring one of the countryÕs largest indoor water parks, Bear Track Landing.

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The Herald-Dispatch

Bear Track Landing is 79,000-square-foot park and has 12 waterslides, six pools and an interactive treehouse waterfort with a 1,000-gallon tipping water bucket.

Purchase this photo

The Herald-Dispatch

Open 365 days a year, the Newport Aquarium, just celebrated its 10th anniversary. The Aquarium, located at Newport on the Levee, features more than a million gallons of fun with exhibits of penguins, jellyfish, alligators, sharks, frogs, snakes, and hundreds of varieties of saltwater and freshwater fish.