Hampton Outdoor Activities
Recommended Outdoor Activities by Groupon Customers
Modeled after video games, scenes from famous movies, and real-life wars, SplatBrothers Paintball Park's outdoor fields challenge first-time and returning players alike with obstacle-cluttered terrain that change early and often. Players can duck for cover in a school bus, ice-cream truck, or disco van, surprise opponents hiding in a chicken coop, or lead attacks from more than 40 bunkers strewn across a spool-littered field. They can also sneak through a trapdoor to climb to the top of a three-story tower, which looms above a field the size of two football fields or 200 one-yard models of football fields.
In between gaming scenarios such as capture the flag and freeze tag, players reload and rehydrate in the Welcome Center, where visitors test their aim at the target range, watch bouts from the viewing area, or feast at picnic tables. Along with private weekday and public weekend games, SplatBrothers Paintball Park hosts tournaments, scenario games, and monthly big games based on pop-culture staples such as Angry Birds and The Walking Dead.
Every fall, as the leaves turn orange and the air becomes crisp, owners David and Patricia Hand open up a portion of their operating farm to the general public. Aptly named the Green Hand Farm Park, the agricultural attraction features an 8-acre corn maze that challenges families, students, and office groups to work together to find their way out. The labyrinth takes on a new theme each year—such as a salute to the American soldier—and incorporates facts and clues. As maze participants interrogate corn stalks for directions, hayrides journey to a pumpkin patch and young visitors leap and bound over bales of hay. At night, campfires spring to life for cooking hot dogs and s'mores. Aside from these attractions, fresh produce, local jams, and baked desserts lure visitors into the farm market. Seasonal plants bloom in a variety of hues at the garden center, whose staff also sells waterscape designs.
Aided by more than 40 years of competitive-riding and training experience, Sharon Golesh built East Coast Equestrian Training Center, a full-service training, boarding, and breeding facility. Hidden under an expansive, baby-blue roof are 54 stalls that stay packed all year long with equine boarders and in-house horses ready to run through guided rides and lessons. Students learn the equestrian arts within [facilities] (http://gr.pn/n2lU5n) that include an exterior riding ring and dressage ring complete with mirrors and a pack of paparazzi sheep hounds. East Coast Equestrian Training Center also oversees the birth of future first-place finishers through its extensive breeding operation, which includes a 2,200-square-foot boarders’ lounge and 19 pastures ready to set the scene for equine matchmaking.
In 1996, Matt Redford opened Chesapean Kayak Tours to introduce others to the beauty of Hampton Roads' waterways, which he called the "backyard of his youth." Years later, he expanded his small kayak company to Chesapean Outdoors, adding biking, standup paddleboarding, and surfing lessons to his lineup of outdoor adventures. Today, Matt leads groups on seaborne sojourns to catch glimpses of bottlenose dolphins, blue herons, and bald eagles in their natural habitat, and his bike tours meander the 2.5-hour trail that winds around First Landing State Park. Atop standup paddleboards, groups navigate the flat waters of Virginia Beach and its state parks as well, and Matt leads more experienced paddlers out into Chesapeake Bay to catch sight of dolphins or fulfill a lifelong dream of feeding a wild catamaran.
Located at the oceanfront, Jungle Golf's aptly named mini-golf course pits putters against a slew of jungle-themed obstacles. As golfers traverse the 18-hole labyrinth, they must contend with breaking putts, keep their distance from the silverback gorilla statue guarding the second hole, stay dry underneath the misting waters of the fifth hole's rocky waterfall, and bribe a life-sized zebra statue to neigh during their opponent’s backswing. In-between rounds, golfers can refuel with treats from the Food Hut or head to the game room for more shrinked-down activities, such as air hockey, skee-ball, and crane-games' simulations of loading 2-ton plush rabbits onto freighter ships.
A businesswoman by day, Bonnie Florek turns into a ghost by night. Donning 18th-century period dress and assuming the identity of one Catherine Rathell, Bonnie regales tour groups with hair-raising tales of yore. Bonnie founded Spooks and Legends Haunted Tours as a means of immersing tour groups in an interactive, goose bump–inducing jaunt through Williamsburg’s historic streets and into the past.
Spooks and Legends Haunted Tours’ guides lead tour-goers of all ages on 75-minute excursions as they narrate true tales of cryptic happenings and how the town’s denizens met their mysterious ends. The nightly tours meander through the oldest lanes and thoroughfares of Williamsburg, stopping periodically to peer at local horror–hot spots such as the Peyton Randolph House, known for its many suicides and murders, and Bruton Parish Cemetery, known to be full of dead bodies. Tour-goers are encouraged to bring their cameras along to document any unnatural sightings of apparitions, orbs, or suspicious screams emanating from the stomachs of hungry black cats following the group.
