Go-Ape and Meridian State Park

Last year for Spring Break, we went to San Antonio with D and the Jboys. This year, March 2023, we went to Go Ape in Arlington, Texas and then camped at Meridian State Park. J1 is all grown up and in the Army. J2, J3, and J4 were on this adventure with Boogs and me.

Go Ape is a tree top obstacle course and zipline. We thought these two things would be separated, but the only way to go on the ziplines was to go through the obstacle course. J4 was very nervous on his first course but finished it and decided to go again. There were four different courses you could go on. Your ticket was for a two hour time period. You could chose to go on as many of the courses as you wanted as long as you still had time. 

D took one for the team. When getting into your harness, you were told you could not carry anything on you or in your pockets. They wanted you to leave everything in your car. We decided not to do that, so D loaded our wallets and keys into a fanny pack. She hiked it up across her chest so the harness could go around her waist. The employee helping D into a safety harness did not say anything about D's misshapen chest. We laughed a lot about that. Unfortunately, the sweatshirt caused D to overheat. She only made it on one of the courses before having to quit.

We were all ready for an adventure. Those harnesses were not very comfortable.

                                       

Some of the obstacles were easy and some were pretty tricky. I'll admit that I was a bit nervous on the course. Especially with the obstacles where the footing was spaced far apart. 

J2 and J3 waiting to go across. At one point, a woman got stuck in the middle of a zipline and the boys had to wait about 25 minutes to be able to continue. You can only go one way on the course so they were not able to go back and pick a different course. And NO, I was not the woman who got stuck on the zipline. I was AMAZING on the courses (for a 50+ year old).

Some parts of the course were much higher than the others. That tiny figure in the middle is Boogs.

The obstacles moved, shook, and wobbled a lot. You really had to hold on and work on balancing. Everyone had to buy gloves to go on the course. You can see J2 hanging on tight.

J4 had a tougher time because his legs were a bit short for some of the obstacles. He figured out that he could lift his feet and ride his harness across some of the obstacles instead of having to try and stretch across the wider parts.

                                     

There were two ziplines across the river. That was my favorite part of the then entire day.

The boys were STARVING when we left Go Ape. We drove over to Pappasito's Cantina for lunch. We nicely asked the boys to pose for a picture in front of the water feature. This is what they did:

Sigh!

If you threaten not to feed them, teenagers will smile pretty for one picture. I can't believe how grown up our boys are.

After we ate, we drove to Meridian State Park to camp for one night.

Meridian is a small state park. We arrived in the evening. The sky was so pretty. 

We explored a little bit and then set up camp. 

The boys had the tent to sleep in. D and I had hammocks underneath the picnic canopy. I draped a tarp over half of the canopy because we know it always rains whenever we go camping.

Our campsite was right next to the lake. It was too cold to swim in but was pretty to look at.

It was a long, dark walk to the bathrooms.

J3 was in charge of getting the campfire going. We ate dinner and then sat around the fire talking and making smores.

It rained during the night. I woke up around five and moved to the car to get out of the rain and turn on a light so I could read a book until everyone woke up.

The boys slept in so D and I decided to go for a walk in the morning. 

The boys piled into the hammocks with us for a bit. Then we packed up and went home. It was a short little trip but we had fun.