Hey everybody, it’s Kyle Sasser here and wanted to take a real quick moment before the show today to let you know that we are actually giving away two tickets to the topic of today’s show, TreeUmph. They were kind enough to send me two tickets for my listeners. If you would like to enter this contest, all you need to do…there’s a link in the show notes for this episode or you can find the episode post on Instagram or Facebook, and basically just tag your friend who you would like to take with you to TreeUmph. It’s a really good time, it’s a lot of fun, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. So thank you.

Welcome to Great Things Tampa Bay, the podcast about great eats, great places, and great people in the Greater Tampa Bay area. I’m your host Kyle Sasser, a Tamp Bay native and realtor. This is the Great Places feed of the Great Things Tampa Bay podcast where you will only hear episodes related to parks, stores, events, shows, and things to do about town. In our main podcast, which you’ll find under Great Things Tampa Bay, in addition to these chats about entertainment and events we also cover great eateries and delicious grub, as well as interview some of the great people, movers, and shakers in the area. You can find our main feed at GreatThingsTB.com. That’s G-R-E-A-T-T-H-I-N-G-S-T-B.com or you can subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play just by doing a search for Great Things Tampa Bay. Thank you and enjoy.

So this is episode 22. We’re going to be talking about TreeUmph down in Bradenton. It was a little bit off of my radar for a while. I was actually introduced to this by a friend of mine, Mike. Thank you for introducing me to TreeUmph. We actually went for his birthday so…This was a little while ago so it’s a little delayed for a happy birthday public announcement but there you go. Happy birthday, Mike. So there’s actually two TreeUmph locations. One is I would still call it the Tampa Bay area, the one down in Bradenton. They have another one up in Brooksville that they’ve been working to open. I believe it should be open now. It had a little damage from Hurricane Irma that delayed its opening but I believe they’re open now.

The one Bradenton, though, is on State Road 70. Basically you get on interstate, you head…Interstate 75 and you head south past Ellenton, over the Manatee River and all that stuff. Get off at State Road 70 and head east and then, you know, you’ll see it down there a little ways. It’s a pretty cool place. It’s very active but it’s good for people of all ages and skills. All the way down from children all the way up to seniors. They do have varying degrees of difficulty so you should be able to match something up with your skill set and physical fitness. It’s basically sort of, like, the American Ninja Warrior things if you’ve seen that show, so yeah. It starts off easier, though. Rope swings and crawling through tunnels and stuff like that. You can basically call it an obstacle course. The cool thing is the majority of the course is set elevated, up in the trees. So they climbed up there and strung these steel cables up in the tops of these pine trees so the whole course is basically off the ground.

If you’ve done zip lining or anything like that it’s very similar. One cool thing, though, is unlike most of the zip lining tours I’ve been on you don’t actually have a guide that goes with you and is constantly hooking you and unhooking you. They have a safety system there. It guarantees that you’re always hooked into that wire so there’s, you know, no possibility of you falling off and breaking your neck. So that does allow you to move at your own pace and struggle with your own struggles, so to speak, and then they have a guide on the ground who, kind of, monitors an entire section of the course there. And if you do get into trouble, you know, you just kind of holler out to them and they will come up there and rescue you. We actually watched a couple rescues and sometimes they can hook legs around you and just, kind of, drag you to the next base there. Sometimes they actually do, like, a full rig with the ropes to lower you down safely to the ground.

Everyone there was really professional. They just want everybody to have a good time and if you go I’m sure you will have a good time. Like I said, it does start off pretty easy. Of course they have cargo nets. They have one where you swing over to the cargo net and then you have to, kind of, climb up the cargo net. So, you know, fun stuff like that and then they have the summit. Whenever you pull in the parking lot that is basically the highest section of the course. It’s tough. You have to want a challenge if you’re going to go up there. The cargo nets where you’re, kind of, switching back and forth was tough but there’s another section where you basically have these little wood blocks that, kind of, look like pencil erasers with a rope through the middle of them. They’re offset so it’s, like, one on the left and then a little further down there’s one on the right. I think you’re supposed to just, kind of, grab it with your hand and just, kind of, upper body strength your way across it. That is not my forte so I think I actually stepped on one of the little eraser blocks of wood and then instantly, you know, tried to hold and make that move. It completely fell apart on me and basically I was just dangling from my wires and just, kind of, drug myself across. It was not graceful in the least but I did finish it. I got to ring the bell so yippee for me and also after that I’ve hit the gym because it was a little embarrassing.

But, again, you don’t have to do all of the different levels. There’s places where you can cut off of the course. So if you’re looking ahead and you’re like “Eh, you know, I don’t know if I can swing that one” you can always bail. One of the last things they have there is they have a 650 foot zip line. They strung a really tall tower that they had actually built. You have to climb this tower up, ride the zip line down there. It’s a lot of fun. We were there, like, four hours. It’s, honestly, a better part of a day. You can run it as many times as you like, you know, on your pass. We’re going to put the link and the information for them on the show notes so take a look, but it’s TreeUmph. T-R-E-E-U-M-P-H. They’re pretty awesome. I can’t wait to go back.

So here’s a little interesting fact about sister city to Saint Petersburg and that’s Saint Petersburg, Russia and it’s frequent name changes. So Saint Petersburg name changed so frequently that it was entirely possible for a Russian to be born in Saint Petersburg back in the early 1900s, go to school in Petrograd, get married in Leningrad, and then die in Saint Petersburg without ever having moved at all.

So I want to thank you for sharing Great Things Tampa Bay with your friends and family. You can share us by going to our website GreatThingsTB.com. There you’ll find “Share It” buttons on nearly every page. You can share us on Twitter, Facebook, all that good stuff. If you are looking for your own great place in Tampa Bay I am also a licensed realtor specializing in deep knowledge of Hillsborough and Pinellas county. So if you want to talk real estate you can give me a call at 727-300-2111 or you can send me an email at Kyle@sassergroup.com. That’s K-Y-L-E S-A-S-S-E-R-G-R-O-U-P.com and I’d be more than happy to help you find your next home here in Tamp Bay. I also need your feedback. I need you to tell me where we should be going and what we should be eating and who we should be talking to, so please go to our website GreatThingsTB.com. You can hit either the contact us link at the top or the get social links also at the top. If you want to be a cool guy or cool girl you can call our voicemail number, which is 727-440-4455 and leave us a message. I’d love to hear from you.

So thanks for listening and I’ll see you next time. And, oh, by the way, if you don’t want to miss the next episode please subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. That will guarantee that you get the next episode delivered straight to your mobile device of choice. Thank you so much and I’ll talk to you next time.