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- Kentucky Derby Pie at Raders Restaurant
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- workers building one of the platforms high in the trees
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- Mark Craven of Ashville, N.C. tries out the new Zip Line at Tree Frog Canopy Tours near Loudonville, Ohio
Zip lines have become the newest adventure attraction in Ohio. Here is an excerpt from my article in the Saturday, July 24th edition of the Plain Dealer:
Northern Ohio’s first such facility will be opening August first. Tree Frog Canopy Tours is just nine miles south of Loudonville in a remote part of the Mohican area, just over the Knox County line.
Zip lines are a series of steel cables usually strung from platforms near the top of very tall trees that carry riders wearing a harness that attaches to a roller device on the cable. Gravity speeds them from platform to platform. Think of a safer version of Tarzan swinging through the jungle on a vine.
The first zip line in Ohio was built just two years ago in the Hocking Hills. It was joined last year by another zip line that operates in a valley near Fort Ancient in southwestern Ohio north of Cincinnati.
Bruce Baker, who spent 20 years as a manager at Snow Trails Ski Resort near Mansfield, is one of the owners of Tree Frog Canopy Tours. The course is laid out over fifty acres of hillside forest, where some of the ancient trees are as high as eight to ten-story buildings, not far from the Mohican Wilderness Campgrounds.
Visitors will zip through the trees for over four thousand feet before they reach the bottom of the hillside where the visitor center, a former sawmill, is located. According to Baker the most thrilling part of the ride is when you zip 730 feet between two platforms that carries you over 150 feet above the valley.
You can read the entire article as well as our description of “Kentucky Derby Pie” offered at a long-time restaurant in Loudonville in the Saturday, July 24th edition of the PD or read it on-line at their web site, www.cleveland.com
Neil Zurcher's One Tank Trips 