the Colorado trip was a blast

I'll attempt to give a brief recap of the family reunion.  It was held at a mountain retreat at the foot of Mt Princeton near Buena Vista CO.  This is what we saw from our lodgings - pretty nice to watch the sun rising behind it. 

That's my guess anyway, I don't get up that early.  It was fun watching my granddaughter's getting right in there to help with the cooking and cleaning.  Everyone was required to take a turn at the domestic duties.  Not surprisingly they were right there to assist with mixing the batch of 96 brownies.  

That may be because whoever did that assignment got to clean up the bowl and super-sized whisk.  


There were some dirty faces afterwards, but happy ones.


Chocolate is such a good motivator.


She Devil did pretty good being cooped up in the canned ham most of the time while there.  She did get to meet Wallace, the Spanish water dog, and gave him a proper warning. He was a bit jumpy after that.  We spent most of Monday just visiting and meeting some of the family members we'd not yet seen in person.


Tuesday we went to the hot springs to soak in the hot water and play on the water slide.  There were different pools with different temps and I loved the one at 103 degrees the most.  The river was running too high to allow us to venture out into the other spots, it just wasn't safe.


Wednesday a brave group of us went on a white water rafting adventure.  We had lots of safety lectures and a three page consent form to complete.  I rented a wet suit, shirt, jacket and booties for the trip and was glad to have every last bit of it.  They are not as figure flattering as you might think - I felt a bit like a harbor seal.  It's exhausting wigging into these and even worse when you find out you've put it on inside out and have to do it again.  You definitely want to use the potty before putting all this gear on.  By the time they added the huge life vest and helmet I felt like a three year old bundled up in a snowsuit and sent out to play...except you can't hardly move or breathe.  Each raft has a guide who does the steering and calling out of paddle commands. I wasn't needed for paddling, thank goodness as I got out of breathe just getting in and out of the bunk bed from the thin air.  All I had to do was hold on to a rope, brace my feet and pray.  I've rafted before in the Wolf River, but I've never experienced class III and IV rapids.  Now I understand why they send a guide with you...yikes!  When I got back from the rafting we started to head for home.
We were getting pretty tired that evening and finally saw a small sign for camping and pulled in.  At first I wasn't too sure, it didn't look like much, but we were beat.  After checking in at the "office" which involved $20 cash and no paperwork, we were told to take whatever site we wanted.  Hmmm.  How to choose?  Do we go over closer to the bikers or stay on the other side with the abandoned RV's.  We decided on the abandoned area and set up next to a nice smoldering pile of garbage.  And us with no marshmallows!  
The following morning the alarm cat went off at 6:30am and we broke camp and started driving.  We continued driving until 9:30 pm when we arrived home and just left the ham in the driveway and stumbled into bed.  There's nothing like the feel of your own bed.


Long Live the Queen of the Road