So the new thing these days seems to be Ziplines. Went back to the Ocoee river a week or so ago. New Zipline place. My buddy, he says the Scout Camp an hour or two farther East has ziplines, not to mention the Nantahala Outdoor Center’s zipline park I heard a rumor about or saw an ad or something. Zip parks goin’ up all over the place. Like this one in Florida I went to last weekend:
This is my oldest kid on the practice line. Zip. I didn’t get photos of the big line- it was raining, and I just don’t know how much of that my phone is likely to put up with, even with my nice Mophie case. I may have to do a product review of the ol’ Mophie case.
So- If you happen to find yourself in the Florida panhandle and need a good zipline experience, there’s Adventures Unlimited to visit. They also have canoes and kayaks and tubing and all. Good looking grounds, nice staff, pleasant office. Our guides were Kevin and Desiree. Good guides. You’ll be lucky if they’re your guides. They’re pleasant and efficient and don’t seem as though they’re bored out of their minds with this zip course, which they might be, considering how many times they must have done it. It rained on us, which kept things nice and cool for a bit, and made the final zip pretty fast and the braking a little iffy (I used both hands) We didn’t do the massive 5-hour trip, which clocks in at $129 a head, but we plan to save up our pennies and do that one next time. We did ‘Taste Of The Tours’ this time for $89 a head, and it was good, but you come away thinking that you’ve still got some ziplining left in ya, and you’d like to do more.
I was lumbered with a string backpack as we were told we might want water while we were out. We did want water, but there was also a hose strategically run up one of the towers for that. We took snacks and all sorts of stuff. Don’t do that. It’s entirely possible that if we hadn’t been rained on, we would have really, really been glad to have a few water bottles on us, but the ‘Taste Of The Tours’ trip isn’t long enough to panic about such stuff. Clip a bottle to your belt. Stick a small soda in your pocket or something. It’s not that I noticed that I had the pack on, or that it caused problems, it’s just that when we got back to the car, I wondered why I bothered. The pack is a cute souvenir, I guess, but it’s going into a pile of daypacks and various too-small-to-be-of-much-use bags.
My wife wanted to see more wildlife on the trip. The traffic through the treetops made the local squirrels change their home trees, so we didn’t go zipping past any startled treerats. We did see a lovely blue-tailed skink while waiting for the guides to come and start our trip, though. Fast little devil. No photos, sorry. I don’t know if anyone else ever sees any animal life on this run, but it’s bound to be fun if they do. Skimming over the heads of armadillos or skunk apes or whatever they have down there sounds entertaining.
On the way back to the condo, we speculated that as more and more zip parks show up, competition and familiarity will thin the crowds and cause the prices to come down. I assume that like Bungee Jumping, or the trampoline pits that had a vogue back in the early 1970s (and also seem to be resurging now), that ziplines will wax and wane in popularity. For now, Adventures Unlimited is a good solid one. It gets a Hubris Thumbs Up.
