Colorado trip

In celebration of our 10th anniversary, Craig and I took a trip together this year, leaving Camryn behind for the first time. She was in good hands with all four grandparents keeping her entertained.

Anyway, we opted against our usual pick for a beach vacation and and decided since it was just us we'd try more of an adventure vacation. So we booked our flight to Colorado. I had been a couple of times to visit an girlfriend from college so had a basic understanding for where we could go. I couldn't wait to get back to the mountains. It's so beautiful there.

We started our trip by driving straight to the mountains once we landed in Denver. We stayed over in Buena Vista and went white water rafting on the Arkansas River in Browns Canyon for the full day.

Here's the view from our hotel that morning.

The guide talked us into spending an additional $20 each for wet suits. Turned out to be the best $40 we spend the entire trip. The water was 45 degrees and we were soaked almost the entire time. We felt like such goofballs in those outfits. But at least we weren't risking hypothermia. This was my favorite activity of the trip. Each of the rapids had names like "Widow Maker", "Raft Ripper", "Sidel's Sink hole". Our guide would prep us for what were about to encounter before each rapid. On one rapid we even pulled our raft to the bank, got out and hiked over to see the rapid we were coming upon. Our guide (named "Sunshine") said one in four rafts apparently flip over at that one We thought it was just something he said to add excitement to the rapid. But he wasn't joking. When we got to the spot above the rapid, one raft had already flipped over and we watched a guide fall of another raft. She went strait into the sink hole and it spit her right back out like a washing machine. The water was really high this year from all of the extra snow in the winter and apparently the rapids are different based on water levels.

This day was so much fun.

That night we drove up to Colorado Springs, stuffed our faces and a great steak house and then got up the next morning to drive up Pikes Peak and ride down on bikes. The complete bike ride was about 19 miles. We coasted for 97% of the ride. There were a few up hills but nothing major. On the way up Craig was sitting on the side of the van that followed the edge of the road. There weren't many guardrails. So his experience going up was slightly different. I really didn't pay much attention to the height. Craig said he kept hoping our driver wouldn't have a medical issue on the way up that would effect her driving. (Glad he didn't say that out loud going up the mountain.)

We stopped on our way up to drop some other mountain bikers off. They were going on this 16 mile trail off the road. The hill they were going down had no way for helicopter or any vehicles to get down if someone got hurt. Our guide told us they would have to hike themselves up back up with their bike. Here's a view of how much further we have to go. Pikes Peak is in the background.

Here we are at the top. We got about 15 minutes to walk around and explore. They had a gift shop at the top of the mountain and train tracks. It was pretty cold at the top.

I bet it's been a good 15 years since I've been on a bike. I was a little wobbly at first, but managed to completely let the breaks go a few places going down the mountain.

This was a fun time. Feeling the wind in your face on the ride down was great and the views were amazing. We actually started our journey down above the clouds (and treeline) and experienced different stages of vegetation as we went down. There were actually people that had hiked up the mountain. Our guide said you have to start super early in the morning. Not only to give yourself time to get up, but you need to be back below the treeline by 2:00 in case afternoon storms rolled in (which are apparently quite common in the summertime there).

And then on our last full day we headed toward Denver and stopped off at Red Rocks to see the incredible outdoor amphitheater there and hike a trail there.

We had such a great time. We're so appreciative to have family that could watch Camryn. We both missed her quite a bit. And she seemed to be doing just fine every time we called. Hope she missed us too.