Akron Outdoor Activities

Once the warm weather hits, families begin to fill the grounds of Sluggers & Putters—a sprawling family fun park built into the natural landscape. Children and adults alike tear around two tracks in single or double-seat go-karts, follow a yellow-paved path through 18 holes of old-fashioned miniature golf, and race to scale a rock-climbing wall. While parents and children fill out insurance claims after playing double-seat bumper cars and water bumper boats, other visitors practice their swing in fast-pitch and softball batting cages. On a landscaped garden patio, staff helms an installment of the local Auntie Em's Ice Cream Co., where they serve frozen treats such as hand-dipped cones and old-fashioned sundaes.

At White Horse Equestrian, riders earn their spurs during lessons, classes, and outings run by the ranch’s corral of coaches. Students learn horsemanship and riding techniques according to their existing skillset, whether acquiring advanced communication skills or fundamentals, such as where in the saddle to store a pony's sunglasses on cloudy days. Casual visitors can board rented steeds for trail rides, attend themed summer camps, or use the idyllic grounds to host a birthday party featuring games, crafts, and instructional trots.

Splat Paintball provides a fun and exciting outdoor environment where brave paintslingers of all skill levels can practice their marksmanship, relieve the stresses of everyday life, and alleviate the guilt of midnight refrigerator raids. With your mask securely in place, your eyes will be safe from blindness and your secret superhero identity protected from inquisitive minds. Sneak stealthily through purple mountain majesties, amber waves of grain, and blue-bespeckled tree trunks as you attempt to capture the enemy’s flag. As you crawl on your belly over rocks and dash between bunkers with the whiz of small paint-filled capsules humming past your ears, open fire while tucking, rolling, and shouting in slow-motion until your enemies, best friends, or coworkers have all been decimated in a splatter of color. The game ends when a flag has been captured, despoiling opponents of the bragging rights guaranteed them by an early, paint-flecked draft of the U.S. Constitution.

Securely fastened into a tandem-parachute system, an instructor and a pupil tumble from a Skylane Cessna 182, a floating sensation running through their bodies for the 45- to 60-second plummet. Shortly thereafter, a more experienced jumper takes the leap from 10,500–13,500 feet as an instructor falls separately alongside to ensure that nothing goes awry between the departure of the aircraft and the opening of the chute.

Back on solid ground, a 25-acre drop zone reunites divers post-free-fall, and in the distance, Skydive Pennsylvania's pilots shuttle other divers skyward in a fleet of aircrafts that includes a Super Pilatus Porter, which can ascend 13,500 feet in 15 minutes. The on-ground personnel photograph and videotape all tandem and instruction-assisted-free-fall dives, converting their footage into professionally edited videos, DVDs of stills, and screensavers for skydiving-prone laptops.