Zipline canopy tour from the comfort of home

by Jamie Rhein on

It wasn’t until I saw this video that I remembered the whirring sound that the pulleys of a zipline make as they zip along the cables, whizzing people from tree to tree.

Although the quality is a bit grainy, the essence of the Hocking Hills Canopy Tour are captured here in just a few minutes. I posted about my personal experience a couple of days ago, but the video is a way to bring you along for the ride.

The people who filmed this, and posted it on YouTube, held a camera at such an angle that it feels as if the viewer is on the trip as well. There’s also footage of one of the rope bridges you walk across during the tour. After the last zipline, there’s a rappel down from the last platform to the ground. That part is also included. Plus, there’s a mix of music and conversation. Nice touch.

Zipline canopy tour: A fall foliage adventure option

by Jamie Rhein on

Back in June, when I zipped from sycamore to oak trees along the highwire cable lines of the Hocking Hills Canopy Tours in the Hocking Hills region of Ohio, I thought, I bet this is gorgeous in the fall.

Now that yellows and reds are just beginning to show their colors, I’d say trees will be in their autumn glory in a week or two. Cold has arrived at night to hasten the palate switch. Meg’s posts about fall foliage tour options, reminded me of this one.

I blogged about this tour before I took it, and am not surprised that it has remained so popular that the season has been extended through November–although the hours will change.

As a person with first-hand experience, I can vouch for the thrill of heading off on a wire from one tree to another. My favorite parts were the sections where I was zipping through the air, far from the platform I had left, high above the ground, and the platform where I was heading had yet to come into view. There is a moment where you can’t see where you are exactly because of the leaves. Then, the next platform comes into view like a surprise of “oh, there you are.”

For anyone who is afraid of heights, a zipline canopy tour might be your cure. A friend of mine said she was afraid of heights when she started the tour, but by the end she was not. Because of the process of clipping and unclipping safety lines, and the calm voices of the two guides–one who leads and one who follows, ensuring everyone’s safety, you know you are in capable hands.

Before you go out on the real ziplines, there is practice session (seen in picture) with a short zipline that’s only shoulder height off the ground. This is when you learn to stop yourself by applying pressure with the palm of one of your hands to the top of the zipline cable. It’s enough of a practice to give you the feel for how the cable, harness, clip and pulley system works.

Before the moment when you leave an actual platform to head off to another platform, you’re always clipped to either the line attached to the tree where the platform is or to the zipline. During the transition, you’re clipped to both to make sure there aren’t any mistakes. There are two clips fastened to your harness. One clip is unfastened from the platform cable and then fastened to the zipline cable. Then, the next clip is unfastened and fastened. This means if you did slip, you’re held up.

The picture is of the only part where you start from the sloping ground and run until your feet lift off. Then off you go.

Seriously, you won’t fall and the harnesses are designed to hold you properly–almost like an adult version of one of those things you strap babies into so they can jump and bounce in a doorway. There is a pulley wheel system that enables you to glide along using the weight of your body, the distance of the cables and the angle of the points where the cables are affixed to the trees.

I did slow myself down too soon and stopped about 25 feet from one of the platforms, but I was able to use my hands to pull myself along easily until I reached the point where the lead guide could pull me the rest of the way.

Seriously, zipping was a piece of cake. (In the picture above, you can see the lead guy on the platform. The person heading toward him is slowing down, partly due to the slope upwards of the zipline caused by the angle and the person’s weight.)

One terrific aspect of this trip is that you don’t have to be an athletic type to have fun. There’s not a lot of physical exertion involved. The oldest person to do the canopy tour, so far, I was told, was in her 80s. Not that 80-year-olds aren’t athletes, but the point is, this is a multi-age, multi-ability activity. You do have to be at least 10-years-old though, and weigh at least 70 pounds to be allowed to go. You also can’t be above 250 pounds. The reason for the weight limit is not that the cable won’t hold, but because of the principles of physics that make the system work. Too much weight throws off the system.

When I took the tour, one of the co-owners of the company was one of the guides. Here’s some insider information not found on the website.

Hocking Hills Canopy Tours came about after she and her husband went to Alaska with two other couples–one of the people was her sister. While in Alaska, all six of them took in the Alaska Canopy Adventure zipline tour, loved it, and thought Hocking Hills would be a perfect setting for a canopy tour company. Instead of thinking about all the reasons their dream might not work, once back in Ohio, they went for it. All pieces fell into place including the land for sale. In months, they had a booming adventure travel business.

The moral of the story, follow your dreams, particularly if you have the dream when you’re traveling.

Sarah Palin in a Corn Maze

by Jamie Rhein on

Sarah Palin is in a corn maze. This does not mean that Sarah Palin is actually in a corn maze, but that there is a corn maze made to look like Sarah Palin. You have to be looking down on the maze and not in it in order to see the likeness. And it does look like her–and also Tina Fey.

I heard about this maze on News Update on Saturday Night Live and promptly checked out the story’s validitity. Yep, the maze is in Whitehouse, Ohio not too far from Toledo. Although the maze of Palin is new this year, The Corn Maze at the Butterfly House where it is located is not new.

Each year the Whitehouse Farm turns acres of corn fields into pictures. There is also an amazing intricate butterfly for wandering among the corn stalks. Corn mazes are one way farmers have upped their revenue in an unsure market. Elaborate pictures are not as common. Palin’s took eight hours to make after an artist made a sketch and figured out how to mow it using a GPS system.

Check out the farm’s Web site for a video of Palin’s maze. You can walk through Palin’s head (sort of a borrowed line from Saturday Night Live) Palin’s addition certainly adds something new to the fall line up of Ohio’s corn mazes.

Here is a YouTube video of a news clip of the Palin corn maze. The owner of the Butterfly House, Duke Wheeler explains how the maze was made and what other fun things his farm has planned.

10 tips for smarter flying


The essence of travel (and life) in simple lines

by Jamie Rhein on

Here is a most charming, animated video from LInebuster that reminds me of what travel can feel like when you’re heading out into the unknown. There is the excitement, the thrill, and the unexpected dips and turns.

The song seems perfect, particularly since my travels through life this week has involved the hurricane caliber winds on Sunday that left much of Columbus, Ohio (and a wide-sweeping range of elsewhere) without electricity. Most fantastic are the enormous trees toppled like twigs. In the past few days, people have gone sight-seeing looking for them, just like they do when they search out Christmas light displays in December. If I would use one word to describe my mood, “startled” comes to mind.

Enjoy whatever ride you are on, even if it’s a doozy.

AirTran Airways to come to Columbus. It’s not Skybus, thankfully.

by Jamie Rhein on

Yesterday’s news brought the welcome breath of new life to Columbus ever since Skybus did us wrong, jilting us like an uncaring, unfeeling lover.

I heard in a radio news broadcast that AirTran Airways will begin flights between Columbus and Atlanta, Fort Myers and Orlando starting November 6. As the news commentator noted, this does not mean there will be a rush on low cost airlines to Columbus. Jet Blue, for example, has been there and done that.

Still, when I think of how Jet Blue used to be here before Skybus RUINED IT, I feel like Kate Winslet, almost frozen to death, floating on that piece of wood after the Titanic sank, hoarsely crying out, “Come back. Come back.”

I’m glad that AirTran has noticed that Columbus is a viable market for folks going to Florida. If you’ve ever been in Columbus, Ohio between January and April, you’ll know why folks are eager to get out of here and head south. The gray skies make this a place to leave if ever the chance arises.

If only AirTran wasn’t bailing out of Newburgh, New York and would make that a Columbus connection as well, I’d be ever so thrilled.

According to this article in the Columbus Dispatch, AirTran has been one of the best managed airlines in the past nine years. Skybus was exactly the OPPOSITE. I’m still stinging from the break-up.