Adventure Days, Feb 2023 – Day 2 Morning (by Cindy)

This is the second post about our Adventure Days experiences during our kids’ visit in February 2023.

If you need to catch up, on the first day, you can read it here. https://rememberitsanadventure.blog/2023/04/26/adventure-days-feb-2023-day-1/

Sunday was our Adventure Day tour. We ate breakfast from the buffet at the casual restaurant, and then dressed and “packed” for the day. As instructed from the previous day, we dutifully wore our swimsuits under our horseback riding clothes, put our afternoon clothes in the plastic bags, where three of us also put sunglasses. John used the croakie to secure his sunglasses and we were off to the Adventure Center.

The Adventure Center was busy – different people checking in for different activities. We walked up to the desk, and who should help us, but the same woman we’d had the long conversation about the broken glasses with yesterday afternoon. We told her we were checking in for the Adventure Day tour.

Without even a hello, the first words out of her mouth were, “Why do you have bags?”

I retorted, “because yesterday you told us that there would be lockers we could use.”

She didn’t have much of a reply for that, so checked us in and gave us keys for the lockers. On the way to the lockers, I muttered to myself, “What do you mean, why do we have bags?”

John leaned over and said, “I thought you were going to hit her!”

We were off to a good start!

We put our plastic bags filled with our clothes in the lockers, and stood around waiting for further instructions, along with many other people.  Finally, they started calling out activities, including our Adventure Day/horseback riding.

There was a fairly large group for the horseback riding. We were led down a path to the stables, not a long walk.  We were near the front of the line. When we got to the stables, we were each outfitted with a helmet, and led to one of the awaiting horses. We were helped on by one of the workers, and waited on our horse while everyone else went through the same process. Of course, this was an opportunity for the Adventure photographer to snap photos for later purchase. I admit, I do appreciate the professional photographers. We didn’t bring our own phones to take pictures, as we still didn’t really know if they’d be safe in the tubing clothes bag (after all, the guy the day before yesterday had his glasses broken), and we didn’t want to take them on the tubing excursion, so we’d just left them in the room safe.

After everyone was outfitted and perched on their horse, one of the workers positioned his horse in front of us and gave directions – very basic directions.  Hold the reins here. Pull the reins this way to go left, this way to go right.  Give the horse a small kick to get moving. Lean forward going uphill, lean backward going downhill.  That was about it.

I didn’t have any expectation that any of us would have to do anything but sit on the horse and hold the reins, and maybe not even have to do that. These horses do this every single day, possibly several times a day, and know where they are going. It was laughable to think that we would be controlling our horses.  The gate opened, and our horses moved out, on their own, without us having to give them a small kick to get them going. 

The horses each had their own personalities. My horse had nudged its way toward the front of the pack, but once we got going, decided on its own pace and was content to let other horses pass us. Andy’s horse definitely wanted to be toward the front and would take some shortcuts over rocks beside the trail to move ahead.  It was obvious that we were just along for their ride.

We followed the road to the same waterfall we had walked to the day before. At that point the horses stopped, and the workers went through the painstaking process of getting each of us, one by one, off of our horses. When we were dismounted, we walked over to view the waterfall. There was also a building that had bathroom facilities – smart.

When it came time to resume our ride, again, the workers had to get each of us back on a horse. I don’t think they remembered exactly who was on which horse – how could they? We’re pretty sure that for the four of us, we didn’t all get the same horse as before. But it didn’t matter.

We then rode on a trail, up and down hillsides, trying to remember to lean forward and backward, as instructed. As riders we had to look out for overhanging branches. The branches were higher than the horses’ heads, so didn’t bother them, but we had to brush them away before we caught a branch in the eye. We finally ended at a corral, and once again, the workers helped us all dismount, and we returned our helmets.  Overall, it was a very pleasant ride.

At that point, we were told to wait for a bus that would take us to our next stop – tubing.  As we waited, we could hear the very friendly lady from the room next to us conversing with different people – making connections with everyone she could. We mostly just stayed to ourselves, until we noticed a guy with what looked to be a ballcap with a vintage University of Iowa Hawkeye emblem. We couldn’t resist and went over and talked to him for a few minutes until the bus came.  He probably thought about us the same way we thought about that friendly lady.

We took the bus to the tubing start location. Here we sought out the man giving out the bags for our clothes, peeled them off to reveal our swimsuits, donned life jackets and helmets, then gathered as a group for our instructions.

The instructions were a little more detailed this time. Needed to hold on the straps of the tube, kind of cross your legs in front of you, don’t let your legs dangle too far outside the tube, etc. He also gave instructions for what to do if you lost your tube. He then assured us that the water was fed from the volcanic springs, so it would be warm.

At that point we headed down, single file, to the water entry point. A couple of guys helped us get into a tube and pushed us down into the water. Liar!  The water was cold! But at that point, no turning back.

This was anything but a “lazy river” experience!  We went careening through rocky rapids, with a few intermittent larger, calm pools.

The guides were strategically stationed to ensure we made it through the toughest parts, securely fastened with harnesses and ropers for their own safety. Then they would swim ahead on their tubes to get us through the next rough spot.

We had to give the guides a lot of credit!

For us, it was just fun, mostly…

Each of the four of us had our own challenges on that river adventure – I passed Allison stuck on rock, trying to get off of it. Andy got stuck on a different set of rocks. In each case I was unable to do anything but smile and wave as I passed by. In one set of rapids, John was flipped and fell off his tube.  Fortunately, he was able to stand up, and get back on. His croakie held his glasses in place through all of it.

My biggest challenge was the calm pools. Somehow, I would get “off” the current, and drift to the side of the river, stalled. I had to paddle to get back to the current to continue, which sounds easier than it was. 

But challenges notwithstanding, what an exhilarating experience!

Finally, we reached the point where we climbed out of the river. Guys were there to help us with that too, who told us to roll the tube back up a hill. I felt fine, but I must not have looked it. One of the guides told me that he would take my tube back up for me. As far as I know, no one else got that special treatment. After that I kind of looked around and realized that I was probably the oldest person there? In these situations, I’m never sure if I should be insulted or grateful.

We boarded a bus that took us back to our starting point, where we collected our bag with our dry clothes. It didn’t look like the bag had been mishandled or mangled, or anything else. We concluded that if someone had put their glasses in a glasses case in the bag, they would have been fine!  Much ado about nothing concerning that guy’s broken glasses!

After drying off, we then took the bus back to the Adventure Center. There we quickly changed into our afternoon ziplining clothes and headed across the street to the hotel restaurant for our included buffet lunch.  The waiter suggested “refreshing” tamarind juice. We’d never had it before, so opted for it. He brought us four glasses with brownish liquid – not really that appetizing. I noticed that the brown-filled glasses at the other tables were mostly sitting untouched. When they sat for a long time, the darker brown tamarind had settled to the bottom, with the lighter brown on the top part of the glass. Despite its looks, I tried it. Meh …

The other comical thing at the restaurant was the silverware. It came in a brown paper wrapper with the top folded over. What you couldn’t tell was that there was really an open end. People would pick up the brown wrapper thinking it was closed, and their silverware would clatter to the floor!  We heard the distinctive clatter multiple times during our meal.

We finished our lunch, looking forward to the afternoon’s activities of zip lining and thermal springs – more to come!