CCB MEDIA PHOTOS
Heritage Museums and Gardens Adventure Park opened for the first time to the public last weekend.
SANDWICH – The new Adventure Park at Heritage Museums and Gardens opened last weekend and 140 visitors tried out the climbing trails and ziplines for the first time, according to Heritage Museums and Gardens spokeswoman Andrea Early.
Early said among those who tried out the aerial course through the trees during the first two days were families and visitors of all ages.
The climbing trails and ziplines are on four acres of Heritage’s 40 acres of property across Shawme Road from the main section of Heritage. The area has long been used to house Heritage’s maintenance department and was used primarily for horticulture and greenhouse staging, according to Heritage Museums and Gardens CEO Ellen Spear.
Many years ago, it was also used as a testing area for Heritage’s famous collection of Dexter rhododendrons, and hundreds of seedlings were planted to test hybrids of the colorful flower, Spear said.
Clearing the land to make those plants visible to visitors is part of the educational element of the park, Spear said.
Signs along the Forest Trail and the aerial trail give nature- and science-related information as an educational component.
The topography of the park area is a Cape Cod kettle hole, a depressed area formed when glaciers retreated from the Cape when the land mass was originally formed 25,000 years ago.
The trail in the trees is as high as 65 feet off the ground in parts. There are five levels of trails from easy to “black diamond.”
The minimum age for park visitors is seven years old.
Spear explained how the park works.
“You get a two-hour climbing session and it takes about 30 minutes to do each trail, so you can do the easiest one and you come back to the main platform and say, ‘Well, that was okay, I think I’ll do the next one, or you can do the same one again.’”
Spear said the adventure park is fun but it is also educational. She pointed out signs along the course, in the trees and along the quarter-mile forest walk on the ground, that have nature- and science-related information designed to be appealing to children.
Walking along the new aerial trail at the Adventure Park at Heritage.
“The sign we’re looking at says, ‘Friction is a drag,’ and it talks about how friction works when you’re up in your harness in the trees, how it works in ziplines and how it works in nature,” Spear said during a tour of the park on Saturday.
Another sign is set next to a pile of tree rings.
“Kids are looking at the rings of trees and they’re trying to gage thru mathematics how old a tree is by how wide it is and they are looking at distances between trees, so it’s a really fun way for kids to get into math,” Spear said.
The Adventure Park at Heritage is open weekends only until early June and then daily in the high season.
