Zipping Through The Trees

Yesterday I went down to Austin to do a Canopy Tour with the Cypress Valley Canopy Tour company. The tour was arranged through a DFW Adventure Group I belong to.

I drove down with four other people (thanks for driving Monica!!) from Dallas. The drive to Austin is a little over 3 hours and Cypress Valley is about an additional half hour northwest of Austin. This took us right through the most beautiful part of the Texas Hill Country. All in all our group consisted of about 20 people.

The Canopy Tour is modeled after similar tours that started in Central America - most notably Costa Rica. The idea is that a separate eco-system exists above or near the tree line in jungles that humans rarely get to see. IN a way this is a similar concept to scuba diving that allows one to experience an entirely different ecosystem underneath the sea.

The tour consisted of zip lines (see pictures) where you zip through the trees between platforms built around some of the larger trees and walking on bridges between platforms. We were about 40 feet in the air most of the time and some of the larger cypress trees were as tall as 150 foot. The zip lines were FUN and very non-dangerous feeling - i.e. I would recommend them to anyone. I just wish that we could have taken the longest and fastest one (we were going up to 30 mph) over and over again.

The guides were very good keeping us clipped in all the time and guiding us through all of the platform changes. We really didn't have to do ANYTHING with our equipment - they did it all. They were also knowledgeable about the trees and wildlife and pointed many things out to us. Though when on the zip lines, I was more inclined to enjoy the ride rather than try to observe nature! lol

Great fun! And all of the people in the group were really good company! BTW - credit to Todd and Monica for all the great pictures!

More pictures below. You can click on all of them (including the one above) to view the larger size.