Volcano and Treehouse Trip: Day Four

Another shot of some typical treehouses. These we found out later have a toilet and sink (one even has a shower), so midnight runs to the bathroom do not require navigating the swinging walkways of death.

We woke to rain. Lots of rain. We had signed up for the "Poultry" zip line course (as in the zip line course for chickens, although it was much more advanced than they let on) at 11 and a tie-dye thing at 2. (We did not sign up for any horseback riding since there is a weight limit that I violated by a little bit. The horses seemed happy that I didn't push it.) 

At 9:30 or so they called off all the morning zip line events since the zip lines get a bit dangerous when wet (it is much harder to stop without doing the George of the Jungle thing and smacking into a tree).

Then the rain stopped (mostly). The zip dudes went out and dried off the Poultry course lines and decided to try it. And at 11, Mrs Notthat and I got suited up.

Mrs was not convinced that the rain was done, so she left her raincoat on.

I was convinced it was done, so I took mine off. Plus there was this whole macho thing.

The first line is really a chicken line, just a few feet off the ground. They teach you to steer (who knew that wildly waving your arms was not the best way to keep control?) and to brake without smacking into the tree at the other end. Little kids could play on this line when classes weren't going on.

The zip dudes were great and patient and funny. One went out ahead of the others with a machete to clear branches that we might run into. (We still managed to run into a number of smaller ones, which added to the thrill - or terror.)

Once we mastered the basics, we headed up to the first real run. This picture gives you an idea of how high we were up. I hate heights, so this was very challenging for me. Mrs Notthat likes scary things, and she loved it.

The next run took us through some trees and had the added challenge of ending up on a platform instead of on the ground. If you look hard you can see me zipping through the woods (like nature NEVER intended).

From that platform we took our final line back to the ground. I was done at that point, but since the rain had stayed stopped, they decided to do the DOA course. Mrs happily joined that  group. This picture gives you an idea of how high one of the platforms was. (That's Mrs coasting to a prefect stop at the platform, which was much harder to do than it looks. She was a natural.)

 

Sadly, my camera battery died so I did not get a shot of the final step in the DOA course, which involved rappelling down a tree. Mrs Notthat then wanted to do the Tarzan Swing (the above picture shows her getting into the harness). 

For this insane thing, they use a golf cart to pull you way up using pulleys and two hand grips that the rider holds on to. If you look hard, you can see Mrs about 50 feet in the air, just before she let go. She loved this a lot. There was no chance of getting me up there though.

Finally, an adventure activity that I could handle. 

Sunshine, in orange with bright yellow hair (she got the name in the 60s in the Haight-Ashbury part of San Francisco), was our tie dye teacher.

Here are the sample shirts she brought to show us. I'm showing this mostly because I wanted to prove that my final result was really intentional, matching the one on the left. Sort of.

Here are all the shirts, tied, dyed, and resting while the dye sets. It's really hard at this point to believe that anything useful will result from this, and it's even harder to not open them up to see what you've got.

 

Four hours later we were able to open them up and rinse out the excess dye and see what we had. Mrs came out perfect - amazingly nice. Mine also came out perfect, although there were a lot of "Hmmmm"s and "Ahhhhh"s. People tried to see horses, dragons, and unicorns in mine. It really isn't meant to be an ink blot test, but it works pretty well for that.

Sunshine came back after dark to see the shirts and to perform a fire dance for us. She was really amazing - she was turning 60 the next day, but she swung these heavy fireballs like they were nothing, and never caught herself or any of the dogs on fire.

And that was it. After a rainy morning we ended up with a fairly nice day. The teenagers spent the day rafting, giving us some peace and quiet until they returned in the evening. Even then, they quieted down when it was time to go to bed.

This was our last night there - tomorrow we pack up and head to Crescent City Ca. And a motel room with its own bathroom. And peace and quiet. (HA!)

That's it - move along...