Shivering Timbers

Michigan's Adventure, Muskegon, Michigan

Michigan's Adventure, a heretofore quaint little park out in the woods, decided to make a name for themselves by building a coaster. This is nothing new for them, as they were already home to three coasters. It was the scope of the ride that made this event newsworthy. Word got out that the park was building an out-and-back woodie well over the 100ft tall mark. It would be fast and long, the statistics said. All very interesting, said we, but it's just an out-and-back and they're a dime a dozen. Then we saw the pictures from the construction site of these mammoth camelback hills that stretched out to the horizon before turning around and heading home. Suddenly, vacations were rerouted, iteneraries were redone, and the word was out: OMIGOD, have you seen what's going up in Michigan?!?

When you drive to the park, you think you've taken a wrong turn. You're driving around in what appears to be the middle of nowhere... then you see it: hill after hill of wooden structure, looming above you, stretching along the roadway almost as far as you can see. It's almost surreal, this huge thing way out here. You race to the parking lot, get your ticket, and head for the Timbers. From inside the park, you can't see anything but the lift hill and the final helix.

You watch a train leave the station and climb the lift. Silently, it slips over the top and is gone from view. You wait. And wait. And wait. After what seems like an hour, you hear it approaching, all clatter and screams. It slams into the helix with a fury you didn't expect after having been gone for so long. When it hits the brakes, riders are whooping and clapping. Then they're out and you're in. Up the lift you go...

From the top of the lift, the view is just awesome. Curvaceous camelback trackage traces an arrow-straight line to the turnaround, nearly a half mile away. But wait! The turnaround is too tall, we'll never have enough speed to get up there. Come to think of it, ALL the hills are too tall! If we make it over them at all, we'll be crawling at the tops. No wonder it took the trains so long to get back to the station...  or so you think.

The train dives down the first drop with tremendous speed, then rockets up the next hill, and doesn't even noticably slow down as it sails over the top, tossing riders into the air with reckless abandon. How can it do this??? No time to ponder, since the train is already plummeting off the second huge drop, racing up the next hill, and screaming over it as well. Third hill, more of the same. This continues SIX TIMES before you reach the turnaround. At this point, most out-and-back coasters would be slow and on their last hill or two. This one is only at its halfway point and it's still running full-tilt.

Dropping off the turnaround, the train seems to pick up even more speed as it heads into smaller hills, a section of trick-track, more airtime than you can imagine, and finally into the helix by the station. By the time you hit the brakes, you are breathless, giddy, and amazed. How on earth can it keep up such speed over those huge hills? I don't have the answer to that. Perhaps Michigan's Adventure skips payment of their gravity bill... but no matter. It does keep its speed, and that makes it possibly the greatest out-and-back wood coaster experience in the world.