Family Fun Day at Butler School

- June 2nd, 2007 - Well, it's been a busy week at GO-Adventures. The end of the school year at Butler School means the beginning of the summer season, and between end of school-year trips and beginning of summer trainings, I re-installed a zip line for the Family Fun Day.

One of the parents was kind enough to make this little video of her children on the zip line - enjoy...

Zip/Wall at JR' Pavilions of Turkey Run

Last weekend we ran a zipline/climbing wall program at JR's Pavilions of Turkey Run (corporate picnic facility near McLean, VA). Participants had to climb up our challenge wall, step onto a platform that sits 40 feet off the ground, and zip down the 500 foot cable. Fun!

Although the action shots didn't come out, one of the clients was able to get shots of his wife climbing the wall and stepping onto the platform. Enjoy!

Adventure Challenge - A Self-led Rotational Teambuilding Event

On the hottest day of the year (so far!) we headed out to Rock Creek Park and met a group from Georgetown University Medical Center for an Adventure Challenge! The group took part in a self-led, rotational teambuilding program, and in spite of the heat, they were great sports and had a good time...

Post-Graduation Climbing at Sugarloaf Mountain, MD

No pictures for this one (I really have to remember to start bringing my camera along--but even when I do, I'm so involved in instructing and facilitating that I forget to shoot pictures), but on Friday morning I took a group of girls from Mary of Nazareth school rock climbing at Sugarloaf on Boy Scout Ledges. They had just graduated from 8th grade and had won the contest to go climbing with two of their favorite teachers, who they teased with all the familiarity of newly-minted equals! The girls belayed and backup-belayed one another after they learned how to manage the rope, tie in, check one another for safety, and call out the climber-belayer cadence ("on belay? belay on! climbing? climb on!"). They all had fun and encouraged one another to keep climbing and keep trying, and I hope they come out for another program sometime soon!

Website Down and Other News

Extreme Adventures Butler Camp has started, the summer is in full swing, we're all muddy here at GO-Adventures...and we have a new name! We've changed our name to GO-Adventures from GO-Adventure Sports, because the old name had too many syllables and no one could remember it. Also, the new name is....snappier. Let us know what you think! The search engines are having a bit of a harder time finding our site now, so hopefully everything will work out...

In other news, we switched our hosting provider to Yahoo!, and we're still ironing out the kinks. The website was down over the weekend (curses!), but it's back up now. Soon we'll have all the links fixed up, and I'll get the photos back in to our blog. Things might be text-only for a little while. Hang with us!

Caving with Cousins at Carnegie Cave, PA

Saturday, June 23rd -

I took Eliza, Rachel and her cousins to a cave near Shippensburg, PA today, and we had a great time. Carnegie Cave, is a horizontal shaft cave that begins with a 200 foot corrugated pipe crawl under I-81. Once we got through the pipe the fun began, and we tried to get into whatever holes we could find. When we got to the back chamber of the cave, Eliza and one of her cousins went off on their own to explore every nook and cranny while the rest of us hung out in the big room.

Naturally, I forgot to take any pictures in the cave, but did manage to snap this photo on the way out...

I'll get more photos next time!

Whiting's Neck and Indian Cave Adventure

July 7th, 2007

Caving at Whiting's Neck Cave, Martinsburg, WV.

Today we took a family caving at Indian and Whiting's Neck Cave, near Shepherdstown, WV. Great day for caving, the heat outside was 91, but the cool inside the cave was about 55! The two boys and their father had been caving before, but they thought this was the "best cave" they had ever been in...

We started at Indian Cave, then ate lunch and headed up to Whiting's Neck. The boys were 9 and 11 years-old, making them the youngest kids to go into the drop. They did a great job, pushing themselves through the tight squeezes and hauling themselves up the rope. This was Shana's first time into Whiting's Neck Cave, so she had to try everything. She was a trooper, and we snapped a shot of her coming through "Rebirth."