An Outing to Sunday River

The Maine Library Association conference is going to be at Sunday River this year, and I’ve been working on planning it for the last several months. (Not like that’s all I’ve been doing or anything, but peppered here and there throughout those  months.) Friday, the MLA presidency and I headed over to the resort to check things out firsthand, and as long as I was already there, I figured it would be a great chance to take the fam away for a short overnight vacation. (Plus, it let us have TV for the opening ceremonies. Score!)

Obviously Sunday River is more a ski resort than anything else, but they offer zip lines, bungee trampoline jumps, rock climbing, and hiking in the summer, so Denisa and I headed over and tried that out on Saturday. You can buy individual admission to each of those, but it’s a ton more economical to just purchase an all day “Adventure Pass” for $25 for adults ($22 for 6-12 year olds, free for under that). (Though I did see one family come in at 2pm and buy an adventure pass. Folks, the place closes at 4pm. To get the most out of your money, I would definitely get there in the morning when it opens at 10am.)

We had a really fun day, starting with the zip lines. It was a fair bit different than the ones we went to in Utah. For one thing, these went much faster. For another, there were no automatic brakes. The braking system consisted of three guys at the bottom, and a system of ropes. It’s not a terribly long zip line, but it was plenty fun. (Unfortunately, Denisa didn’t get to go. She waited with MC in the morning, figuring we’d go again in the afternoon, but they shut the zip lines down in the afternoon due to wind. Gusts of 15mph is enough to stop things, because the three guys and ropes aren’t up to stopping people when they get going too fast.)

We went up to the top of the mountain on a gondola (three times, because the kids loved it). We had debated hiking down or not. I was in favor of the hike, and others wanted to just ride down, so we compromised on a short loop of a hike. But then we got lost, and we ended up hiking down the whole way. Honestly, it wasn’t a bad hike down at all, but the kids weren’t really feeling it, and MC was particularly unhappy, which made things more problematic. But it was a gorgeous day for it, and it was shady through most of the trail.

We all tried the bungee trampoline jumping. I’ve seen those other places, and I’ve always been interested to try it out. Turns out I can jump really high, which is a ton of fun . . . until the motion sickness sets in. Something about the up and down motion, coupled with swaying front to back if you don’t jump just right, just did bad things to my stomach. (Trying to do flips while I was doing the rest probably didn’t help things either.) The kids loved it, though. MC would happily have stayed on that trampoline for hours, and TRC and DC were pros at flips by the end of everything.

We had a very fun time, and it was well worth the money. (Though again, go early.) Give it a shot if you’re looking for an easy way to enjoy the outdoors. (Come on. Hiking without ever having to go uphill? What’s not to like?)

Anyone else ever been?