When several friends told me about their recent zip-line trips,
I decided to add this thrilling activity to my bucket list. I checked out the
available options and invited my frequent traveling buddy, Coral
Beach, to join me for a fun-filled adventure on the Zip-Nac zip-line in Nacogdoches. It’s billed
as “the newest thrill in the oldest town in Texas”.
Since we were headed for the oldest town in Texas, we couldn’t
resist booking two rooms at The Brick House Inn Bed and Breakfast for the
night. It’s the oldest brick building there. The photo at left shows us standing out in front of this quaint B&B.
After a hearty breakfast at the inn the next morning, we
took off for the Zip-Nac to be “zippers” (persons enjoying the excitement of
riding on an elevated pathway of cables) for a day. The Zip-Nac is a “canopy
tour”, which means that once you start the course, your feet won’t touch the
ground until you slide across all four lines. There’s no turning back!!!
We bravely donned our zipping attire (harness, helmet and
gloves) and posed for a photo before the fun began.
Next we headed outside for “ground school” training, where we practiced
control techniques for steering and braking on a low cable.
Here I am dangling
from the practice line, anxious to get started.
After a couple of tries, our instructors declared us to be
cable-ready, so we climbed the six-story platform to the first line. It was 50-feet
high and 285-feet long.
In the photo at right, our guide hooks my harness
to the cable for my very first zip.
Three people in our group of zippers chickened out at this
point, but Coral and I pressed onward for an afternoon of high-flying thrills.
This photo shows me zipping across the third line, which was 400-feet long. From there,
we climbed another three flights of stairs for our final zip, which turned out to be two, side-by-side
cables, 900-feet long, where we raced each other back to the starting point.
I won’t tell you who won because, if you know anything about
gravity, you know that the heavier you are, the faster you fall!!! (Maybe I
should have skipped that extra piece of bacon at breakfast!)
It was an incredible day of high-flying adventures on the
zip-line!
More zipping to come!
