Aventure Laflêche - extrêmement awesome

The weather here this summer has been fabulous (if you like weather of the scorching melting hot variety, which I actually don't, but I also don't love everyone moaning and wailing when they don't get it, so on balance....). However, it has also had a nasty habit of sensing when I'm planning to do something fun and unusual with the kids that we've never done before and dumping a bucket of crap on those plans. So we didn't get to Puppets Up in Almonte, or Saunders Farm (I know, I'm possibly the last person in Ottawa who hasn't been to Saunders Farm). Of course, the kids are usually already pumped up about doing something, because I'm - what's the word? - a moron, so we have to do SOMETHING, but it's raining, so the something almost invariably ends up being a movie. And kids movies this summer? SUCKED SUPER HARD. The Smurfs? Jayma Mays and the awesomeness that is Neil Patrick Harris, and Hank Azaria, plus little blue people? Actually it demonstrates a sort of impressive savant-like level of excelling at being lame to screw that up. Spy Kids 4? I was cautioning my daughter that we might have to go to some special theatre - IMAX or something- to get the SmelloVision, since I thought they'd be blowing bacon-flavoured mist out of the vents or something. Nope - just a darling little scratch-and-sniff card, with eight numbers on it that, when scratched, all smelled pretty much exactly the same. Ditto with the writing and acting.

So when we woke up on the day we were going to the Laflèche caves and it was threatening rain I said FUCK IT - we're still going (in my head, of course - I hardly ever say 'fuck' in front of my kids, and the one time I did Eve tolds me consolingly that we'd just pretend I was saying 'seal' in French).

We went with my friend Janet and her son and daughter (wasn't it brilliant how the whole group of us birthed boys first and girls second? Years of great parties where the boys play video games and shoot nerf darts at each other downstairs and the girls play mysterious games and shoot nerf darts at each other upstairs and the adults drink wine and shoot nerf darts at each other in the family room and on the patio) and took another 12-year-old boy with us. We did the children's course, because the girls weren't tall enough for the adult one (it's totally true, you can look it up, it had nothing to do with my morbid fear of heights and looking stupid, which I did anyway).



So they harness you in and you inch across ropes and ride on wooden swings and crawl through MOVING WOODEN TUNNELS, none more than 4 metres above the ground (which is really not that close to the ground when you're up there, trust me).





Both segments of the course end with a baby zipline ride. This was probably the thing that freaked me out the most and then surprised me with how much I liked it - once I committed myself to lurching off the platform in a most undignified manner, it was surprisingly comfortable and exhilarating. Until I crashed into the rocks.



(Picture of me? Yeah right).

As we were walking back down the path talking about how much fun the course was, Janet said "actually I'm a little surprised you did it all -- don't you have a phobia about this kind of thing?" I said "oh, I'm totally soaked in fear sweat right now, but you have to challenge yourself every now and then". Then I asked her to hold my hand in case my wobbly knees refused to carry me any further. Angus is keen to do the adult course, which is three and a half hours long with much longer and higher ziplines. I told him I have to train for six months and undergo extensive counselling first.

We had a picnic on the tables by the pond, where we could watch people sail overhead on the Adventure Course ziplines. The girls chanted DROP YOUR SHOE! DROP YOUR SHOE! every time - curiously, no one did.

Then we went on the cave tour. I thought this was going to be the easy part, and then I remembered how I'm mildly claustrophobic. It's kind of annoying the things I've scaled and squished through and the water slides I've gone down headfirst, all in the name of showing my kids that sometimes you have to feel the fear and do it anyway. It's not totally fair that they have to do it anyway without the promise of tequila afterwards, but still...

The caves are really cool. Well, all caves are, aren't they? It's a big mountain that you can walk inside - that's cool. Plus we got to wear headlamps!




We also had to climb up a small, clammy, endless ladder at one point, but let's not dwell on that.



There was one tiny tunnel we were supposed to crawl through. I was about to clamp down my burgeoning hysteria and proceed, and then I thought, wait, surely not everyone who does the tour would consent to this insanity. So I went around.



When we were doing the course, the rain couldn't even reach us through the trees. The minute we got out of the caves the skies opened up and we were drenched by the time we got back to the van. It was still a great day - with no little blue men, crass product placements or baby poop sight gags, just good, outdoor, mild-panic-attack-inducing fun.