When I was in Boy Scouts, many moons ago, I can remember climbing 30-40 feet up a tree and zipping my way down a zipline to earn a merit badge. In those day, we had no safety helmet, no safety straps, it was just my ability to hang on to a wooden crossbar and the thrill of zinging my way down through the canopy of trees to the earth’s floor.
Today, it seems, ziplining has become quite the rage in the travel industry and a great many destinations are scrambling to put together ziplines for their thrill seeking guests.
These photographs are taken from a company in New York’s Catskill Mountains called New York Zipline Adventure Tours, with other zipline properties in New Hampshire, Jamaica, and soon to be in Kentucky.
New York Zipline Adventures offers tours for everyone ages 7 to 77, at every thrill level, from mild to extremely wild. Each course contains multiple ziplines and challenge elements designed to create a different experience for each guest.
The Mid Mountain Tour and Adventure Tower are both great introductions to ziplining and rope courses for ziplining newcomers, as well as a good way for more daring riders to prepare for the Skyrider tour.
A true canopy tour, the Mid Mountain course takes guests through the forest on six ziplines, four suspension bridges and an exciting rappel and is perfect for families in need of a little mountain adventure.
Extending more than 3,000 feet and as high as 600 feet, the Skyrider contains more than 4.6 miles of dual ziplines and suspension bridges and is North America’s largest zipline tour.
I don’t know about you, but I think this sounds like a complete and total blast!
It also makes me wonder, will we be ziplining across the Grand Canyon anytime soon? Probably not, but what an adventure that would be.
How about you? Do you see any ziplining in your future?
With a current audience of 500 million people in Facebook, the airlines have been very busy building relationships/fans and adapting this new social medium into their marketing strategies.
If airlines are feeling a slight dip in their bookings, all they need to is put out a special deal on their Facebook page and multiple thousands of fans will see their offer.
Best of all, it’s free!
The holiday season is generally not a time for airlines to be throwing out travel deals, but just look at some of the deals I found with just a very little poking around:
Virgin America – Have you flown in main cabin select or first class? Upgrade your holiday travel for as little as $35 (+taxes/fees/restr) and enjoy more room to stretch out, free food, drinks and entertainment. As if flying with us wasn’t already uber-fabulous. https://vgn.am/6037uLqL
Southwest Airlines – Play the Southwest Airlines Cart Commander and find out how easy it is to book a flight, hotel, and car all at once! You could win one of over 150 instant prizes, plus get a chance to win our Grand Prize, a trip for two to Las Vegas. (Note: Southwest Airlines has over 1.2 million fans on Facebook!)
Delta Airlines – Don’t forget starting today we’re giving you FREE in-flight Wi-Fi through Jan. 2 courtesy of Google Chrome! Delta has 2,200+ Wi-Fi-equipped flights each day–what will you do with your free #DeltaWifi? Check out details at https://www.delta.com/freeholidaywifi. (Note: Delta Airlines just added their 100,000th Facebook fan).
American Airlines – FLIGHTS ON SALE! The holidays are just around the corner- celebrate with low fares across the U.S.! Book your trip now on AA.com and travel between 12/18/10 – 1/4/2011! Details: https://bit.ly/FHYSALE Where are you going for the holidays?
I found all of these deals within five minutes on airline Facebook fan pages.
As I mentioned before, airlines deals are not all that juicy prior to the very busy holiday travel season. But, come January 2nd, keep a sharp eye and you just might grab a real attractive travel deal for yourself.
Page Springs Cellars is a small, family owned vineyard and winery located along Historic Page Springs Road in the Central Arizona Highlands. They focus on crafting fine, European style wines that express the unique characteristics of the Verde Valley landscape (in fact they even have a signature wine called “Landscape”).
Page Springs believes that wines are expressions of the land. Their winemaking focuses on bringing out the characteristics of “place”. They use very little new oak in their wines as they feel strongly that oak masks a wine’s true identity.
They espouse the notion of “Open Production” which is a term developed by the owner and Director of Winemaking, Eric Glomski. He believes that you should not put your faith in some third party “Organic” certification, but rather you should have the opportunity to buy your produce from farmers that are local and have their doors open to you.
You have the right to fully understand and see their whole process and you should be able to OPEN any door that houses inputs that are involved in that production.
Page Springs Vineyards does not use any petro-chemicals whatsoever in order to produce healthy, clean wines.
Page Springs Cellars is primarily a Rhone house.
“While my first love was certainly Pinot Noir, I have developed a serious relationship with varietals from the Southern Rhone. Here at Page Springs Cellars, we primarily work with Syrah, Petite Sirah, Grenache and Mourvedre. Additionally, we dabble with other red grapes such as Cabernet Pfeffer, Counoise, and Cinsault. Our white grape loves include Viognier, Rousanne and Marsanne. While you may occasionally see us blending with Cabernet Franc, Barbera or Sangiovese—the flavorful grapes of the Rhone will always be our focus.” (Eric Glomski, Winemaker – Owner)
We greatly enjoyed our visit with the Page Springs Cellars team. We sampled a variety of their wines and purchased a few favorites to bring back home with us.
Hot Tip: plan your visit to Page Springs Cellars around lunch time. They have a beautiful deck along Oak Creek designed for you to picnic and enjoy a bottle of Page Springs Cellars Wine. Unfortunately, the weather was far too cold when we visited to enjoy the deck.
Disclosure: our experience was provided by the stellar wine making folks at Page Springs Cellars. Thanks!
Evening Sky Tours ~ Sedona, Arizona – When we moved to Arizona from Michigan in 2006, we never realized what a dark night sky actually looked like. As it turns out, the communities around us have “light pollution” laws to protect the majesty of the Arizona night skies which they see as one of the great assets of Arizona.
Even though I live in an area with 4.5 million residents, a simple walk out my front door in the evening will always produce a gasp of unbelievable awe.
In spite of light pollution laws, however, 4.5 million people can’t move around in the evening without causing a great deal of light pollution from their automobiles, their street lights, and their decorative exterior home lighting.
Ninety miles to our north, situated in the famous red rock canyons, lies Sedona, Arizona. And a short 30 minute drive outside the lights of the small town of Sedona produces skies that…well…are simply to beautiful to describe.
We were invited by Sedona’s Evening Sky Tours to a remote parking lot in the Coconino National Forest where we would observe, with the aid of a powerful telescope and the near absolute dark skies; planets, stars, galaxies, nebula, and even a few shooting stars.
We arrived to our remote location, 30 minutes outside of Sedona, to an asphalt parking lot where we saw a grouping of comfortable lawn chairs set up, a warm woolly blanket set on each chair, and a large telescope pointed into the night skies.
When we exited our automobile, we were completely blind for a moment as our pupils worked to accommodate the very small amount of light available. Thankfully, our star guide, being very aware of our situation, came to our rescue with a flashlight that emitted a red beam and helped us to be seated in our chairs. Being one of the first arrivals, he warned us to cover our eyes as other vehicles approached so that our eyes might stay adjusted to the dark night skies.
We were very thankful for the warm blankets as the weather during our visit has produced an unusual cold snap that was giving us temperatures of only 29º. BURR!
As the final reservation party grouped their way to their seats, we sat back for a fascinating 90 minute tour and viewing of the highlights of the near-winter Sedona nighttime sky.
Through the powerful telescope, we witnessed Jupiter with its gas clouds and four moons, several cool star clusters, nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy, and a plethora of other objects brought to our view.
When we weren’t taking turns looking through the telescope, we were comfortably seated in our chairs and gazing into the nighttime sky as our astronomer pointed out interesting objects with his green laser that seemed to be able to actually touch the stars, many light years away.
The astronomers at Evening Sky Tours have, on average, 25 years of observing experience and use their large state-of-the-art telescopes to tour you around the heavens. Some of them have worked at NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Cliff Ochser, the President and Founder of Evening Sky Tours, has a wealth of business experience and served as the Director of Development for the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Cliff was also instrumental in helping Lowell build the Discovery Channel Telescope, a world class research telescope under construction at Happy Jack, Arizona.
This was an absolutely amazing experience.
It is one that we will remember for years to come, and is one that we can confidently highly recommend to you.
Disclosure: this experience was provided by the really smart folks at Evening Sky Tours. Thanks!
The Roaming Boomers
These photographs are taken from a company in New York’s Catskill Mountains called New York Zipline Adventure Tours, with other zipline properties in New Hampshire, Jamaica, and soon to be in Kentucky.
A true canopy tour, the Mid Mountain course takes guests through the forest on six ziplines, four suspension bridges and an exciting rappel and is perfect for families in need of a little mountain adventure.
