I recently wrote about our adventures at Ramblewild in the Berkshires, but in today’s Kid’s Turn post you get to hear what Hannah, age eleven, had to say about our adventure.
Ramblewild. Just the name makes this fantastic aerial adventure park sound awesome. At least to me. As you may already know, I’m a rock climber, so it’s a bit like OMG-This-Is-So-Crazy-Awesome!-Land to me. It’s pretty much a climber’s dream.
Anyway, when we first got to Ramblewild, I was kinda dissapointed. Where were the ropes? the ziplines? the bridges? I was very confuzzled. Then I realized that this was only the lodge. We had to trek through forest for about seven minutes before reaching the gear shed and course.
Once we got our gear on, we were shown how to make clips, do zips, and hug trees on a mini course about three to four feet off the ground. Then, we were ready to hit the trails! It was required that we do at least one yellow course first, but we ended up doing both instead of jumping to green, due to Dad’s fear of heights and Mom’s cautious nature.
We started on Fearless Grouse, (I’m guessing Dad isn’t secretly a grouse!) which was easy and fun to me, though not quite as much so for my parents. I breezed across every element with ease, whereas Mom and Dad struggled on some of them. After completing a final zip, and making a few crash landings, we headed for Lost in Trees, the next yellow route. This one had some less stable elements, which made it a blast for me, but a challenge to the other members of the family, namely my dad. But, we made it through.
Mom and I decided to continue on and try a green, Trekkers Reach, even though Dad stayed behind. So, we once again climbed the ladder to the Hub, and this time went for the green. The green wasn’t significantly harder than the yellows in the beginning, but as we moved further along, with our photographer (guess who?) taking our pictures at every element, it got trickier.
There were two harder parts. The first was a netting bridge (no problem!), but, there were little stoppers along the wire, which would prevent you from going any farther if you ignored them. So, in a nutshell, looks easy, but isn’t. The other hard part is just after the element previously mentioned. The rock wall. If you read the beginning carefully, you may be thinking, “But I thought you are a rock climber?” I am, but the holds were spaced very far apart, and some holds wiggled when you tried to put your weight on them. Eeek! Thankfully, there were little holes cut through the wood, providing safe handholds that were easy to reach. Yay!
Finally, at the end of the course, there were two zip/trapeze elements. On one, you stood on a small log, and hung onto wires on either side. On the other, you hung onto a bar, and it worked like a zipline at the end of a course does, so you ran in your landing. It sounds weird, but it’s the best way to describe it!
But no matter how I describe the landings, I know that I will remember this trip, and always want to come back to Ramblewild for new adventures.
Ramblewild is located at 110 Brodie Mountain Road in Lanesborough, MA in the Berkshire Mountains. Summer rates are $69 for adults, $63 for teens and $57 for youth. Please check website for current information.
Note: Our visit was hosted by Ramblewild for purposes of facilitating a review. I can assure you that this did not influence the author’s opinions in any way, since she wasn’t paying for it anyway, and as you can tell, she had a blast.
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