Adventure in our own backyard: treetop trekking

I’m adventurous by nature, although as I get older my fear tends to get the best of me. But that’s topic for another day.

When my cousin from Indonesia and his wife visited us last August, my sister and I were looking for something different and fun to do. We came across a Groupon or Wagjag deal for a Treetop Trekking adventure at Horsehoe Valley. I checked out the website and although it wasn’t clear to me what treetop trekking entailed, we decided to purchase vouchers anyway to check it out.

We went on a Friday afternoon. Treetop Trekking is, as it turned out, basically going through five levels of aerial courses ranging from beginner to extreme. These aerial courses consist of various obstacles fom walking across from one tree to another on a monkey wire to climbing nets to walking across a suspension bridge to zip lining across or down.


It seemed a bit cheesy at first, considering they weren’t very high off the ground. Having walked on a suspension bridge 4,600 ft. above sea level in Costa Rica, I thought this experience would be easy peasy. Surprisingly, it was harder than I had expected. Like a lot harder. The zip lines were the easiest and the ones I looked forward to the most. The obstacles got longer, higher and harder with each level up.


We went all the way to level four when our time was up. A part of me was disappointed we didn’t get to try the most difficult level, and a part of me was relief. I think it was 30/70 actually. I was exhausted and had run out of juice. Not sure I could have made it through another level.

We ended the day by going down the “big zip”. It’s called the big zip because it was long, although I can’t remember how long. Maybe 100 ft.? However, since I’ve zip lined a couple of times including going down ten lines in Costa Rica with the longest being about 2500 ft. long and the highest 500 ft., this was more relaxing than thrilling in comparison. But it was the best way to end our treetop trekking adventure.


The best part was that this was practically in our own backyard with it being two hours away from home. We didn’t have to travel across the world to have some adventurous fun and most importantly, my cousin and his wife had a blast!


It’s funny how we tend to think that in order to have some real fun and adventure we’d have to go to some exotic place. This experience was an eye opener. It’s nice to know that something like treetop trekking is available so close to home. I wouldn’t have known about it if it wasn’t for Groupon or Wagjag. It was good times for sure!

Have you ever discovered something you didn’t expect to be available so close to home? If so, what was it?