Banning Mills Ziplining | 12 Months of Dates

My hubby isn’t the easiest man in the world to shop for when it comes to gifts.  Ok, seriously, what man is, right?  For Christmas last year, I gave him 12 months of dates, and it’s been a huge hit!  I shared a little about our January date HERE but I haven’t updated you since then.  (Shame on me, sorry.)  We recently celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary, so for this date, we had an Anniversary Adventure that I can’t wait to share with you!!

Let me give you a brief recap about how these dates work.  On Christmas Day, Mark opened a box that contained 12 envelopes, all labeled with the months of the year.  On the first day of each month, he gets to open that month’s date.  Some are more elaborate than others – so far we’ve had the following dates:

– January: We visited the Atlanta Cyclorama and Atlanta History Museum.  Mark loves history and had been asking me for months to visit the Cyclorama, so it was a natural choice for our first date.
– February: We made it a Blockbuster night…well, Redbox.  Neither of us is a big fan of Valentine’s Day and all the crazy that goes along with it, so we opted to stay home, watch movies, and snuggle on the couch.
– March: I took Mark to his favorite burger joint, The Vortex, then we visited the Atlanta Brewery for a tour & tasting.

Here are a couple pictures from our March date:

Y’all, we have had the best time on these dates!  Our Anniversary Adventure was the best so far.  It was a two-day affair that began on a Saturday with a trip to Monroe, Georgia, the antique capital of Georgia. We visited several HUGE and amazing antique places, a couple of which are set up inside old warehouses.

This was an old cotton mill with two stories of antiques…and this wasn’t even the biggest place we visited.

Now if you think for one second that Mark wasn’t enjoying himself with all this antique stuff, you’re wrong.  He hit the jackpot!

He stumbled upon a box full of old toys, and while this isn’t the best picture in the world, it perfectly captures that moment when my grown husband reverted back to a 10-year old boy.  He found a Skeletor toy and all the accompanying pieces, and proceeded to play and make sound effects.  I’m not kidding.  It was quite hysterical.  🙂

Oh, and for the record, no – those toys did not come home with us.

On Sunday, our actual anniversary, we went to Historic Banning Mills and took part in a zipline adventure tour.  This place is so gorgeous!  There’s a huge lodge and several cabins, but it’s the ziplines that are the biggest draw.  Historic Banning Mills holds the Guinness World Record for the World’s Longest Zipline.

This is the view from the balcony of the lodge.  That’s Snake Creek beneath us, and up there, high above the treetops, is one of the many zipline platforms.  That one is called The Screaming Eagle…and we did NOT go on that one.

I’m a chicken, y’all.

There are various levels of ziplining that you can choose from, up to Level 4 that includes The Screaming Eagle.  We did Level 2.  We had some safety instruction and got our gear, then climbed our first platform and we were off!

We started on “baby” lines – not too high off the ground and not too long or fast.  It was so much fun! Once you take that first step off the platform, you quickly warm up to the idea of zipping out of trees.

The platforms got progressively higher and the lines got progressively longer and faster, but it was all good!

This part?  Yea…this was the part I couldn’t handle.  We had to tightrope walk across one cable between platforms.  I know I’m smiling in that picture, but it was only to keep from crying.  Mark was laughing at me.  As soon as I got onto the platform, I said, “Nope!  I don’t like that.  I don’t like it at all!”

This part – the actual ziplining part – was a blast, though.  We had so much fun!  We were with a great group of people and our guides were awesome.  They take pictures the whole time so we didn’t have to worry about that.

Mark loved it and wants to go back to do The Screaming Eagle.  I have to warm up to the idea of walking across those tightropes again.

That picture gives you an idea of the platforms.  See how small they are?  Now imagine 11 people on one at the same time.  And those oh-so-lovely suspension bridges – yikes!  Makes me nervous just looking at these pictures again!

After we got out of the trees, we hiked the property.  This bridge was still kind of scary, but I felt much safer with the netting on the sides.

We hiked down the river and saw other zipliners on different levels of their adventure.  It was so beautiful, and the perfect way to spend an anniversary.

We love trying new things, and these dates have been the best way to do just that!  I’m looking forward to the rest of them!

What’s the best date you’ve had?  Did you try something adventurous?

For more about me and my main squeeze, check out these posts:

In Praise of My Husband

20 Things You Might Not Know About Me