Ahhh, southern Indiana. The late summer sunsets that are
something out of a John Mellencamp song. The gently undulating hills. The go-to
location for thrill seekers.
Wait, what?
It’s true. Might not seem like it, but this is a region
loaded with unexpected thrills. Add them all together, and you’ve got a
vacation fueled by adrenaline. And French Lick Resort is at the convenient
epicenter of all of it, with adventure awaiting in every direction (including
hundreds of feet above ground a hundred feet below ground).
Go-karts, laser tag and a 40-foot slide tower that's the launching point for indoor waterpark slides are a
pretty good start — you can find all of those just by trekking across the
highway from the resort. Same thing with Escape! French Lick, which has joined
the mix with themed escape rooms to invoke thrills of the more cerebral type.
The thrills only accelerate when you venture out of town
about a half-hour or 60 minutes. Take the plunge and learn more:
Caves
Our little corner of the world is home to the only five
caves in the state that you can tour: Bluespring Caverns, Indiana Caverns,
Marengo Cave, Squire Boone Caverns and Wyandotte Caves. The cave experiences
range from tamer walking tours to full-on wet, muddy and dark immersive
adventures that require a change of clothes and a shower before you get back in
the car.
Case in point: the Deep Darkness experience at Indiana
Caverns near Corydon involves dropping down a 93-foot belayed system ladder to
descend into the cave, hooking into another rope and traipsing across rocky
slope to reach the river at the bottom, and kayaking through spaces so narrow
that you have to lay down in the boat and place your hands on the ceiling to
pull yourself through. Oh, and you’re almost totally in the dark, except for
the helmet lights to guide the way.
Indiana Caverns is a paradox, because it’s several thousand
years old and about 10 years new. The formations and animal bones date back to
the Ice Age, yet these cave sections you encounter on the tours weren’t
discovered until 2009 and 2010. (The standard 90-minute Showcase Tour opened in
2013 and the Deep Darkness opened in November 2015.) Much of the thrill comes
from splashing and slogging where few have ventured before.
“It hasn’t been very many people go through there other than
people we bring on the tours. I think they find that exciting,” said Sarah
Blevins, who helps lead the Deep Darkness experience that involves squeezing,
ducking and crawling through a tour that last four hours. And Blevins pointed
out the Deep Darkness tour is starting to catch on more with the
adventure-goers. “I ask my group before
we climb the ladder out what they want to take on in the trip. A lot of times
(at the end of the tour) they love it but say they will never do it again, and
other times they love it and want to bring their friends back.”
It scares you to death, then you want to get back in line
and do it again. The delicate balance of a heart-pumping thrill.
Wilstem Ranch
Plane tickets to sub-Saharan Africa tend to be on the pricey
side. This route’s much simpler.
“The elephants, this about as close as you can possibly get
to these guys, other that living with them in the wild, so it’s pretty amazing
to be up and hug on ’em,” said Blake Compton of Wilstem Ranch, a hidden gem
just a few miles from French Lick featuring animal and outdoor adventures. “One
of our giraffes even will let you touch his face and scruff on his neck, which
is pretty unheard of.”
When else in life do you get the chance to nuzzle with a
giraffe, feed a kangaroo or touch an elephant’s ivory? And rev up to 40 mph on
ATV tours at the same place? Wilstem Ranch is teeming with adventure around
every turn, including exotic animal encounters that you don’t have to make the
trek to Indianapolis, Louisville or Evansville to see. In fact, you can even
get up a little closer at Wilstem with a range of bookable experiences
including an Elephant Spa Experience with the chance to “paint” the toenails of
a multi-ton creature. The exact lineup of animals is always changing, but at
the moment you can find three elephants, two giraffes, five kangaroos, four
alpacas, three llamas, an iguana and even three caged pythons up to 8 feet
long.
If thrills off the ground are more your thing, Wilstem is
one of two venues with a 25-minute drive of French Lick Resort featuring zip
lining. The other is Lark Valley Zip Lines, which boasts 10 main lines and
three mega lines that cross rivers and take riders skittering over dense woods.
Wilstem features nine lines, including one more than 100 feet off the ground at
its highest point.
Wilstem’s ATV tours ran range from calm and mild, to bumpy,
dirty and wild, whichever your style. There’s over 35 miles of trails, and it
gets switched up so each rider has a different experience on different trails.
Parts of the paths go through old train tunnels, and at one point you can go
underneath the railway bed that ran from Chicago to French Lick in the old
days.
Holiday World
You roller coaster connoisseurs know all about the term “airtime.”
For the uninitiated: That’s the feeling when you rise out of
your seat during a ride.
For coaster lovers, those brief airtime moments are
intoxicating. For coaster cowards, they can be unsettling.
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| Holiday World's newest and most popular ride puts riders on the side of the track through the twists and turns on Thunderbird, the nation's only launched wing coaster. |
Whichever sensation you’d experience from airtime, you get the most of it on The Voyage, a 1.2-mile track touting more airtime than any other wooden coaster in the world. Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari is speckled with several such thrill rides, including the two longest water coasters in the world.
The waterpark alone — that’s the Splashin’ Safari part — is
worth spending an entire day. (New for 2018 are eight new junior water slides,
called Tembo Falls, plus a junior wave pool.) For thrills at a little higher stratosphere,
you’ve come to the right place as well.
An underrated thrill: The Raven, which is a wooden coaster
that’s not as long, tall or fast as the Voyage, but thrill-seekers love it as
it barrels over some of the park’s densely wooded hills with unexpected twists,
turns and dips. Thunderbird, the nation’s only launched wing coaster, leaves
riders dangling with nothing below their feet and the feeling that they’re
separated from the security of the track — and for some coaster gurus, that
make for a thrill more raw than the tallest or fastest rides.
Thunderbird is the park’s most popular ride, and at No. 2 is
Raging Rapids, a whitewater rapids-style adventure that smaller kids can ride
too. A perfect place for those little thrill seekers to start.
With vacation season right around the corner, start thinking
about a getaway that’ll get your pulse thumping. Everything mentioned above is
within an hour’s drive or less from French Lick Resort. More info about nearby
attractions can be found here — ready to get your thrill on?