By Blake Guthrie
For those in need of more than a front porch rocking chair experience, here are some outdoor adventure options around the northern part of the state to help get the adrenaline flowing,
Spotlight on: North Georgia Canopy Tours
For the uninitiated: a canopy zip line tour involves strapping yourself into a harness with a pulley attached to it, buckling up your helmet and zipping around through high treetops on steel ropes. North Georgia Canopy Tours in the foothills near Lula opened in April of 2010. Owners Leah and Kirk Watkins were inspired to start the company after taking a canopy tour of the rainforest during a family trip to Costa Rica. This elaborate, adrenaline-rush nature tour is about an hour away from Spaghetti Junction.
If you're a bit anxious about adventure at such heights, you are safely harnessed and hooked in the entire time, and each tour has two expert guides to help ensure smooth passage through the canopy, down ravines, over small lakes and across a pasture bordered by the snaking North Oconee River.
With more than 100 acres of land, North Georgia Canopy Tours has introduced new attractions such as adisc golf course (one of the holes is inside an old chicken coop longer than a football field) and the increasingly popular GPS scavenger hunt game of geocaching. Glamour camping, or "glamping," in furnished teepees is scheduled to be available beginning in early summer.
North Georgia Canopy Tours: 5290 Harris Road, Lula (call or use the directions on their website). 770-869-7272, www.northgeorgiacanopytours.com.
Other North Georgia outdoor adventures
Sporting clays and horseback riding at Barnsley Gardens
Barnsley Gardens near Adairsville is well known as a spa retreat and a wedding/honeymoon destination, but it's also a good spot for some outdoor action, includinghorseback riding and sporting clays. Sporting clays involves shooting clay discs the size of a bird with a shotgun along a course of natural terrain. The discs, which are hurled by machines, come flying out of the brush as a bird might. T And if you've never shot a gun, you'll be guided through the process of safely loading, targeting, firing and handling a shotgun. For horseback riding, Barnsley Gardens has miles of riding trails and a stable full of horses. After a short riding instruction from a guide in the corral, you set off on your choice of wilderness tours lasting from one to two hours.
Barnsley Gardens Resort: 1-877-773-2447, www.barnsleyresort.com.
Hang gliding at Lookout Mountain Flight Park
To get to this North Georgia adventure spot you'll have to drive to Tennessee and back into Georgia as you circle around the point of Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga. Novices join an instructor to fly tandem for an introductory hang gliding experience 5 to 10 feet above the ground, culminating with an unforgettable flight 2,000 feet above the valley floor and a grassy 44-acre landing site below. Lodging options are available at the flight park for students and members.
Lookout Mountain Flight Park: 7201 Scenic Hwy., Rising Fawn. 1- 800-688-5637, www.hanglide.com.
Whitewater rafting on the Chattooga River
The Nantahala Outdoor Center has a Chattooga River outpost about eight miles east of Clayton for their guided "Scenic Family Adventure" and "Maximum Excitement" trips on two different sections of the river. The Chattooga is a federally designated National Wild and Scenic River and marks the northeast boundary between Georgia and South Carolina. Many of the whitewater scenes from the movie "Deliverance" were filmed on the river. The "Scenic Family Adventure" trip contains gentler Class II and III rapids (minimum age 8), while the more white-knuckle Class III-V rapids of "Deliverance" fame are located on the "Maximum Excitement" journey -- previous whitewater experience is recommended for this trip.
Nantahala Outdoor Center (call or visit the website for directions to the Chattooga River Outpost): 1-888-905-7238, www.noc.com.
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