It was not restful.
After an interrupted sleep, each time the train rolled thru… we had a 40 min drive back the way we came. After a longer than expected day in Banff and then a long hike yesterday, today we planned a family fun, sanitised, low distance day out.
We arrived early at Golden Skybridge, an adventure park that sits straddling a deep ravine with two mega rope bridges. At 150m long each, and 130m above the valley floor you need a good head for heights. Some old dears clearly didn’t, and shuffled their way across really slowly, as if that would prevent it from collapsing.
On the otherside we found our first stop, a treetop assult course. After the tutorial level, we jumped straight on the green (easy) route and worked our way around. It was easy but not a walk in the park. Of course, cockily, the next one we did was the black (hard) route.
To do this one, the instructors insisted you had to demonstrate a pull up. Until about a year ago, Aimi couldn’t have done one, but shes a climber now and knocked one out easily. I think maybe they should have insisted on 5 pull ups consecutively. This route was HARD. Anyone without some climbing ability would find this hard. The instructors did say, but at these sort of sanitised adventure playparks they aren’t really hard, but this one was no joke.
The start wasnt physically but mentally demanding as they showed us a system of locking the lanyard into a special device to allow you to bridge a gap in the safety cable. This was demonstrated at the start and then used right at the end to allow you to jump off and use an autobelay to lower you to the ground.
Physically it got hard after the first couple features, including a cargo net vertical tunnel, a rope ladder climb and a zip line. Then we were faced with a set of disks suspended on ropes. This honestly had us both hanging from the safety cable as they danced around and required serious grip and upper body strength to move thru. Aimi being ill and me being a chubby fuck, both struggled and came out the other side sweating. Luckily the next few were more balance based until we hit the next hard one. And that was the pattern all the way to the freefall at the end, other than Aimi slamming into a tree and giving herself a deep purple bruise on her leg!
It was a great challenge and fun, but genuinely exhausting. As I finished the course, and saw some lads preparing to start up it, I told them. Who knows if they made it round. Maybe some of them are still up there. After that we needed a rest so head over to the main area for some lunch – yeah, it took that long – before going to check out the other attractions.
Next up was the mountain coaster. This was really good fun! A 1.5 person rollercoaster that winched you to the top and set you rolling on your own. Then you had handles to control how fast it went. Some people took it sedately, but we both just kept the brakes off and went as fast as possible. Honestly it was a little scary how rattly and fast it went. But maybe if you aren’t trying to out-man your wife you could take it slower and enjoy the ride sweeping thru the trees a little more. It might actually be a good ride for mum to get used to a roller coaster as she could go as slow as she wanted until she got used to it.
I wish we could have done it again but next up was the mega zipline across the canyon. Not much to say about this one. It was exciting and fast to fly over the canyon, but over quite quickly. I think I enjoyed the roller coaster more.
We left about 2pm and picked up a coffee in town. There was a 2 and half hour drive and then we had to find somewhere to park up for the night, not having booked anywhere. I wanted to get to where we were meeting our guide for tomorrows excursion but Aimi likes things planned out and so found us a campsite where it was expected you just turn up.
It was a really nice site, right off the highway and in amongst tall trees. No electric or water but a hard standing and picnic bench is all we need with this RV. Oh, and some cash to pay for it. No cell service out here means no card payments so its old school cash in an envelope.
We didnt have cash because… what millennial does? So we took a 40 min round trip to get some, nearly locked ourselves out of the van, and then came back, paid cash and settled in for some pasta and friends on Aimi’s tablet.