The Royal Seekers Know The Feeling

Your heart pounding through your chest before the roller coaster you're on reaches the top, pauses for just a moment,

before plummeting to the ground at high speeds before it whips you up and around and upside down, again and again.

The feeling of your blood racing, your hands trembling, before you jump out of a perfectly good airplane, thousands of feet above the earth, clinging to a parachute, which is now your only lifeline.

To a thrill seeker, these events are exhilarating, because when you are afraid or emotionally charged, your body produces adrenaline.

When adrenaline is released in your blood, it increases your heart rate, blood pressure and your breathing rate. It gives you a new sense of energy and sharpens all of your senses.

This sensation creates a high, without the drug, and some people get addicted.

They look for that thrill constantly, doing things that most people would never dare to do.

They find new heights, explore parts of the world others will not, and set out to break world records.

But sometimes, these adventures don't go as planned. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

Another thrill seeking episode you're on a kick, I feel like.

I am for sure. I found this episode before the Colorado River one, and I just really like adventure and fun things.

I guess maybe to start the New Year off, I'm just feeling adventurous, so I found this story, which is a really cool one I'm excited to tell.

So is it a survival story or what is it? Um, kind of. So my story today is going to be the story of a parachuteist named George Hopkins, who set out to make a record number of parachuting jumps in a single day, and in that he wanted to create like this huge public spectacle of himself.

So beforehand, he wanted basically to do a publicity stunt. So he chose to parachute out of a plane and land on top of devil's tower national monument to gain recognition.

Is that legal? No. I was going to say I feel like that is not approved. It is wildly illegal. I cannot do it.

Which was part of why he thought it was a good idea because people would take notice. Okay, gotcha. And this was part of the multiple jumps in a day, or was this just a single event that was supposed to be eye catching.

This was a single event that was supposed to be eye catching where he would be like, hey, now that you know who I am, check out in a couple days, I'm going to be breaking the world record, like come check me out. Kind of thing.

All right. So he has a plan. It's just not probably a good one. Yeah, no. And you've been to a good plan. You've been to devil's tower. I did. Yeah. And it was I say this. I think after I research stories, but I'm like, if I had known this, there would have been other things I would have looked out for there, which I'll get more into in the story.

But I always think it's cool to know the history of parks and things that have happened there. So I look at it a little differently now, but maybe people who are visiting who will hear the story can know think of this when they go. I'm excited.

Because I've never been, but of course, devil's tower is iconic. I feel like anyone can envision it when you think about it.

Yeah. And if you can't, I would highly suggest everyone who is listening to this episode to just Google a photo right now, because you really need to know what devil's tower national monument looks like to get the full just of the story.

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