Zip-a-dee-doo-da it’s a Ziplining Day

Natalie’s Ten Year Old Trip
Day 4

August 8, 2013

Another day, another adventure, and today’s highlight is ziplining.

 

 

 Not just any ziplining, but a course that runs along the rim of the New River Gorge,

on deck, waiting for our turn to zip the gorge

 

photo taken by Dick while zipping
 

with nine breath-taking (I call them scary) zip line runs that feature deep chasms far below the lines,

 

 

plus two swinging sky bridges designed to cause coronary thrombosis. 



the bridge stretches to infinity--the ground disappears below

 The final feature is a free fall line from a 55 foot tower (this comes after the second sky bridge which is longer than a football field and only one board wide, with gaps between boards wide enough to stimulate the thought that gasp is almost the same word as gaps).  

 

Natalie flips upside-down during her final zip

So glad it is almost over

 After our ziplining follies, we return to our base at the Glades and work on finding the rest of their geocaches.  One of them is along a trail that we soon realize we have entered from the wrong end.  Not one to turn back from a challenge, Granddad starts us bushwhacking through the underbrush, scrambling up what looks like a deer trail to the top of a ridge.  When we come to a dead end and anticipate the possibility that we may have to turn back, we scramble around the obstacles and find another tiny opening that brings us closer to the cache.  We are sure we are the first searchers to follow this treacherous route. 

Natalie observes, “The easy way is for losers.”  We laugh, hard, then decide that this could be a good motto for Team Glover.

 

 

Of course we find the cache, and it is not an easy hide.  Then we hike back to the car following the real trail (longer, but much easier, and quicker, too).  Along the way we pick up lots of beautifully colored leaves, and Natalie artistically arranges them on the luxuriant moss for a pretty photo op memory of our walk in the woods.

 

 

When we go to redeem our Glades Geocaching BINGO card for our prize (we have BINGO three ways, and would have the card filled if three of the sites had not been compromised), we are a little disappointed to find that all our hard work has only earned us one free bowling game at the resort bowling alley.  Once again, the reward is more in the process than the prize.

 

We try to eat dinner out on the deck of the Glades Resort restaurant where we ate on our first night here, but we are interrupted mid-meal by yet another rainstorm.  We stick it out under the sun umbrella over the table for a while when the rain is wimpy, but give up and go inside when the wind starts driving the pelting rain against us.

 

This is our last night in wet, wild and wonderful West Virginia.  Tomorrow we leave for Colonial Williamsburg, which we hope will be less wet.