Ziplines

While in Cave City, we took on an adventure that wasn't initially planned. Alyssa and Emma saw brochures for ziplining in our hotel lobby and immediately had their hearts set on going!

There were two courses, a primary and a secondary course. The secondary course was made for lighter weight {mostly children} riders. I didn't want the girls to go by themselves into the woods, and I just barely made the weight limit for the secondary course, so I went with them. This is us at the end of our zip lining tour. You had to be 50 pounds and Rebekah is not even close, but I doubt we could have convinced her it was a good idea, even if she weighed enough. Dave wasn't able to follow us back there, so we have no actual zipline photos of the girls.

My dad on the first zip of the course.

My mom flying through on her first zip.

These were our tour guides. I think the girls would have stayed out in the woods riding the ziplines all night! It was a lot of fun and super fast!! On the secondary course that the girls and I took, they pitch the lines at a steeper decline so that a light weight passenger cannot get stuck part way through the zip. We were told it is very difficult to retrieve a person who stops out in the middle. The first thing the tall guy on the right said to me as he was helping me with my harness was "Because of your weight, you are going to come flying into the stops, but don't worry, I got you." I wasn't sure how much I could trust a guy who thought it was okay to start any coversation with a woman by saying because of your weight... He was right though, I really did crash into the end points a lot faster than the girls did, and he did successfully stop me before I ran into any trees, I'm just not sure if I have ever felt quite so self conscious of my weight before.

Since we lack pictures of the girls on the Cave City zips, here are some of the girls ziplining in my parents' backyard...








Alyssa and Emma were both totally fearless ziplining in Cave City. Emma insisted on being the first to go on each line, the tour guides thought her enthusiasm was funny and a little crazy too. There were some very wobbly tree house like things we had to wait on between zips, a couple of them we even had to climb up onto from rickety old ladders nailed to the side of a tree. I'll admit, I was scared, and more than a little thankful to jump off and go flying into open air. I was so glad that it worked out for us to do this, because the girls wanted to go so badly...and how cool is it that they can zipline in G&G's backyard everytime they visit?!

Canoeing the Green River

One of my favorite things from vacation was our canoeing trip on the Green River. We canoed a four mile stretch that goes through Mammoth Cave National Park and it was gorgeous and so, so relaxing!

Just like surfing last summer was a dream come true for Alyssa, this canoeing trip was a little dream realized for Rebekah. She has long had a fascination with small, human arm powered watercraft, she even has a favorite blue kayak that sits out front of Dunham's Sporting Goods store that she has been asking for as a gift on her next birthday for the last two years. I can imagine her going to college in some mountain town where she can spend her weekends hiking and canoeing. She will of course first have to learn that hiking is not sitting on Grandpa or Daddy's shoulders as they do the hiking, but once she gets there, I am convinced she will be the outdoorsiest girl we know. She was upset in this picture that the sun was shining right in her eyes.

The scenic Green River gets it's green color, and name from the great depths of the water. We did go through many shallow areas and the water was crystal clear and so pretty, despite the green name.

The girls took turns with Emma and Rebekah first going along in my parents canoe while Alyssa was with me and Dave, then they flip flopped. Alyssa was initially nervous to go with my parents because of a close call they had in almost tipping, but she actually did a great job rowing their canoe for a while.

We packed a picnic lunch that we ate on one of the many small islands we came across on our trip down river.

During lunch, Emma found the tiniest frog I have ever seen. Can you spot it on the rock near her left hand?

Enjoying their time in the canoe, we could hardly get them to come out, even just to eat. This picture also shows how the clear water is when looking at it up close versus the green hue it takes on when seeing it from farther away.

Demonstrating her powerful canoeing stroke.

Happily relaxing in the canoe.

Victory after she safely parked the canoe on the side of an island.

It was such a perfect afternoon, we could not have asked for better weather or more beautiful scenery. This stretch of the Green River has some of the most diverse wildlife that can be found in all of the Ohio River tributaries, we saw mostly turtles {probably 100 or more} and a few oddly colored ducks.

For as relaxing as it was to float down the river in the canoe, I was surprised at how sore my arm muscles were a few hours later. The canoeing was so much fun though, and the girls enjoyed it so much, that come Spring, we will have to find a closer to home place to go again!

Adventures in Mammoth Cave National Park

One of the places that the girls were most excited to visit on vacation was Mammoth Cave. It's the largest cave system in the world, and it was a pretty neat adventure.

The entrance to the cave seemed a little bit scary. Maybe I've just seen too much Criminal Minds, but it reminded me of scenes I have watched in the show where victims are taken to desolate, underground, dug into the side of a hill kind of locations to be tortured.

Once inside, the darkness and the sudden cold was a little disorienting, but the winding staircases and tight "hallways" were interesting as well. I took some photos looking down the staircases and they are all so weird, they came out dark, blurry, and it's hard to tell which way is up.

The huge rooms of the cave were absolutely beautiful. A word my mother-in-law uses came to mind: scariful. The quality of being simultaneously beautiful and scary. It was both intriguing and terrifying to look around and appreciate the cave formations, and wonder what would happen should the walls fail, or if we got lost from the group etc...

While in the cave I kept thinking of the story, Alice in Wonderland, specifically the part near the beginning where she peeks then moments later stumbles into the hollow of a tree trunk saying, "What a peculiar place to give a party...Curious and curiouser!" The threat of falling into the complete darkness of the cavernous holes remained ominous, yet I couldn't stop peeking over the edge of railings. The girls loved exploring!!



It was neat to see the different textures of the walls. There were rough, porous looking walls like the photo above and other sections of walls looked very smooth and rolling like the one below.



Entire sections of some walls were cut out and missing.


Two parts of our tours that the girls loved the best {these stretches in fact weren't long enough for Emma, she kept asking "was that it, can't we do more?"} were Tall Man's Misery and Fat Man's Misery. Named this way because of our need {except Rebekah} to squat down and hunch over to get through and then turn sideways and squeeze through the very narrow passageways.

In this photo notice the small glowing lines above and to the right of Emma's head. Those are the straps of the backpack I was wearing. As we moved through the cave the tour guide could turn on dim lights along the path. Other than that, it was total darkness. At a point during each of our tours the guides gave us the opportunity to experience that darkness by extinguishing all forms of light on our tour. It was the kind of darkness that your eyes would never be able to adjust to, as we learned in our brief minutes of total darkness. There was not even the tiniest glimmer of light anywhere for the straps of my backpack to grab onto. I was holding it in my lap and the glow-in-the dark was completely useless. If anyone had the inclination of separating from the group I'm sure the thought of spending time alone in that condition made them re-think that.

But don't worry, there was a phone available for making emergency calls ~ should you be able to find it.

And these bugs were everywhere on the cave ceilings.

Surprisingly, or maybe not so since they don't like people, this is the only bat we saw the whole day!

Amazing stalactites.


As we left the cave, it was weird to walk around outside imagining what we were standing on top of. It was cool.

A funny memory from the caves is that as we were hurrying along to hike a little circle route that led to a scenic overlook and get back to the visitor center on time for our next tour, I was rushing Rebekah to keep up. She kept sitting along the path jotting down answers in her Junior Ranger book. The more I pushed her to keep walking, the more she kept insisting with a whine, "I want to do my homework!!" I saw a woman watching Rebekah with amusement and after the scene replayed itself four or five times the lady laughed and said something to me about how I should appreciate the moment because she never had to beg any of her kids to stop doing homework.

I've decided to try to record as many little stories like that as I can, either here on the blog or in my own little notes to myself or the girls because I can't even explain how many times a day the girls say or do something small and I think oh, I'm gonna blog about that. And very often, I don't ever get around to it, or the post I am working on gets so long with photos and such that I leave it off, but I think years from now if the girls ever come back here to read this stuff, that is probably what they will enjoy the most. So I am trying to be better to include what is most important :-)

Happiness

...Is running up, and then rolling down a huge hill with your sisters...

An afternoon spent rock climbing...

Doing fall crafts...

Getting funny face paintings {Emma had a pink squirrel and a black spider, Alyssa chose a bird and an octopus and Rebekah had a ladybug and a pumpkin}...

Visiting the long-lost painted turtle cousin of our runaway pet...

Discovering a "secret" outside door to a "hidden" indoor playland...

Hiking and enjoying the beautiful Fall weather.

A Saturday at the Urban Ecology Center Fall Festival = lots of fun and 3 very happy girls!