Week 54: Adventure Park!

As you can probably guess, when we get any chance of a break in the weather, we like to spend as much time outside as possible. We had the opportunity a couple of weekends to go with the Luxembourg Ex-Pat group to an adventure park (okay...that is crazy...I can't believe there is actually a Wikipedia page for adventure parks). An adventure park is also known as a rope course and is where that special group of kids went in high school to learn "leadership" skills (or, I can only assume...I was never part of that group...they always talked about some awesome thing called a ropes course, so I figure this was it). The idea is you have a bunch of platforms up in trees with "elements" between them that you need to navigate. These will be things such as rope bridges, or other methods previously only seen in movies for crossing deep ravines.

Jason crossing a lava pit

The park we visited (Parc Le'h Adventures) is located in Dudelange, Luxembourg. This was not our first time at such a park. We had also visited one on the MA, NY boarder (Catamount) a couple times in the last few years--it is equally as awesome, so if you ever have the chance, I *highly* recommend it.

Zipline!

One of the best parts about the adventure parks we have been to, are the zip lines. (Quite frankly, I work my way through the other elements just to get to the zip lines.) You can see me on one in the photo below. In the US, they give you gloves with your other gear when you check in, so you can slow yourself down a bit on the zip lines without chewing up your hands. In Luxembourg, they didn't give us gloves, but instead had well padded trees, so injury was (generally) avoided.

The end of a zip line

There are a number of different courses at these parks and each varies in difficulty, starting with the kiddie courses for the young ones and those not so comfortable with heights, going to those primarily intended for Navy Seals or teenage boys. Since Jason and I had some experience with them, we started with the second hardest, which was pretty good for us. We then did the course two levels below the first and then the one one level below the first, making it through 3 courses in total. Most of our companions weren't quite a quick/comfortable and made it each only through 2. We did, though, have one member of our group who tried the hardest course, which included a "Tarzan" swing, which required swinging from about 35 feet in the air on a rope to catch a 4 foot wide cargo net that was hanging opposite at a similar height (don't worry, there is *plenty* of safety gear). Unfortunately, he missed grabbing the cargo net, so the staff had to pull him down with a ladder, but he had a great time trying, which is really all that matters.

Oh, and did I mention we had a perfect day out in the woods?