A Chaotic 3-State Family #Vacation - #BethanyBeach #HarpersFerry #Chesapeake

So, I've been living out of a suitcase for eight days now, staying at three different houses in three different states.  Of course I feel very fortunate to have been able to take a 10-day vacation full of stops to see family and friends.  But I'm starting to miss my house and my pets!  We've had a lot of fun so far, with many adventures along the way.  For most of the week, we've been with our best friends and their kids, combining two families of four into a chaotic group of eight.  At the beginning of the week, my girlfriend stumbled across an article in the Huffington Post that had us all rolling with laughter: Vacation or Trip? A Helpful Guide for Parents.  We had to all agree we were, most definitely, on a "trip".

The kids in the ocean at Bethany.
We all were in at some point,
trying to beat the heat.

But it's been a trip full of adventures, and long drives, with plenty of family memories forming along the way.  We began Sunday evening in Bethany Beach, Delaware, a beautiful town with a great book store that hosts me for annual book signings.  We stayed over on the bay side, packing our eight, one friend, and one dog into the house.  The weather was sunny and very HOT...a heat index of 104 degrees one day.  That was, of course, the day the air conditioning broke.

So our trip to take the kids to the Rehoboth Boardwalk was delayed one day, due to an emergency repair on the AC, but we did get them there, returning home with a ton of candy and cheap prizes from the arcade games.  In a strange coincidence, my younger son woke up the next day with a very upset stomach and threw up all morning.  Thankfully, it was not a stomach bug that traveled through the group!  He was on the mend by the time we arrived Wed. afternoon in Leesburg, Virginia, the beautiful hometown of our friends.  Aside from enjoying the pool and restaurants, we went into wine country to antique one day.  Oh, and we decided a visit to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, would be a good opportunity to try our hand at white water tubing.  We should have learned our lesson after our previous visit to the same area for what's now known as the "Zip Lining Disaster of 2013".  All I can say is it's nearly impossible to keep eight people together without ropes, which are not permitted, on a river with strong currents and a mind of its own.  There was some panicked moments of missing the correct path, some frustrated moments of getting stuck, and a lot of hilarious moments involving trying to get back into tubes we'd abandoned after one of those panicked or frustrated moments.

One of my favorite stops - an antique market near the
setting of my YA novel DIVINE FALL

By Sunday, we were stopping in Potomac, Maryland, for lunch with more family members before heading to my sister's neighborhood on the Chesapeake Bay.  I get to enjoy time with my little nieces and try to sneak in a little bit of relaxation.  My sister and I love spooky ghost movies (and they help inspire the haunting mysteries in my novels) so we'll marathon a few (we watched "It Follows" last night).  Then our "trip" will be capped off tomorrow with a big soccer game at FedEx Stadium - Chelsea (my oldest son's favorite team) will play Barcelona (my younger son's favorite team), and I'm not really sure where we can safely sit with the boys wearing jerseys from opposing teams.  Wednesday will bring us back to Cape Cod...the end of the journey will be a little sad, but coming home is always a wonderful feeling as well!  Until I have to start on that giant bag of laundry...

Adventures in #ZipLining - #HarpersFerry #WVA #Travel

I love being scared when the actual risk of danger is relatively small: riding roller coasters, visiting haunted houses, reading (and writing) ghost stories, watching scary movies, etc.  So when my best friend suggested we take our families on a 3-hour zip line “Canopy Tour” in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, I agreed enthusiastically. 

My two boys have inherited this adrenaline-rush-seeking gene from me, and my husband is usually game for anything athletic.  My friend’s husband and her two daughters were on board as well.  After all, the 8 of us had visited the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas together and all tackled the steepest, longest waterslide I’ve ever seen.  If we could do that, we could do this.

We did ask our 19-year-old lead guide if anyone had ever died on the course.  He assured us that had never happened; if it had, the park would no longer exist.  The safety measures they had in place were very impressive.  But once you started that course, you were up in the treetops for the duration—there is no way to get up or down.  So we were told that everyone needed to use the bathroom before hand, because if they have to rappel you down, you are done. 

He and our other guide went through all the possible scenarios and procedures with us, and he probably thought he’d covered any situation.  He said he’d seen it all…but we ended up proving him wrong in the first 15 minutes!

The view from the treetops - 3 states visible: MD on the left, VA in the middle, WVA on the right

Throughout the course, each group has 2 guides with them, one who goes first to help catch you and unclip you as you land, and one who is at the start platform before you go, hooking you onto the line.  In the meantime, you are ALWAYS hooked to a tether on the platform.  So you are always hooked to something, either the center of the platform or the line.  There are 8 tethers plus 2 for guides and that’s the max that can go together.

There I go!

Our group got through the first 2 stations, and then there was a wooden suspension bridge you have to cross, since you’re headed up to a higher platform and a zip line alone won’t work.  So it’s shaky footing but your zip lines are attached to a cable above.

They space you out as you cross.  My friend was well ahead of me when she lost her footing.  She started flying backwards because she was so far uphill at that point.  She could have grabbed any of the stationary ropes along the sides of the bridge, but instead she grabbed her zip line, which of course was moving backwards with her.  Not helpful.  So she was yelling, “I can’t stop” and dragging her heels across the boards to try.

BOTH her shoes came off in this process and fell about 50 feet to the ground.  I had to catch her with my legs to stop us both from continuing backwards.  When we managed to finally get over, the guide asked, “Where are your shoes?”  My friend, who now had only socks and torn up heels, was worried she would hold the group behind us up.  So she said, “Forget it, I don’t need shoes.  I’m fine.”

They never told us we weren't allowed to lose our shoes along the way

But the lead guide said he could not let her continue without shoes.  Since this had never happened, he had to figure out what to do.  In the end, he opened a trap door and rappelled down to the forest floor.  He found her shoes, then had to run back to the start of the course, since there’s no other way up.  He had to zip though (literally), going ahead of others to get back to us.

Meanwhile, we were stuck.  You need 2 guides to move forward (and shoes).  The second guide said the next group might pass us, but I pointed out there were only so many tethers on the platform.  No way could another group of 8 come onto our platform and fit, let alone be tied safely to the platform.  They were stuck too, as was anyone behind them.  So, we held up the entire course for nearly 30 minutes.  Slightly embarrassing.  

Let’s just say we had a lot of laughs, finished the course, and made sure we got out of there before the group behind us made it to the ground.  And our guide got a huge tip.