Vacation in Colorado

As I said in the previous post, we just got back from vacation on Friday and really had a good relaxing time. Let me start by saying we are lazy vacationers. We plan maybe one thing per day (if we aren't visiting family) and plan to sleep in and generally relax. Some of you may be thinking that is the way vacation is, but you haven't vacationed with my dad. He doesn't like to waste a single minute and we were always running here and there the entire time when I was growing up. For example, in one weeks time we did San Francisco, California beaches (Morrow Bay area), visited family, drove up Hwy 1 ( I was able to skip this) and go to the East side of CA to visit Yosemite National Park. Ridiculous! So we have chosen to be lazy vacationers and do a few things, but generally spend our time relaxing.

We decided to go to Colorado for vacation because my family was having a big 60th Wedding Anniversary celebration for my Grandparents. While all the family was there, we generally visited and hung out with them since we don't see them very often. After every one else left on Monday and Tuesday, my grandparents took us up to Trail Ridge further into the mountains. Besides that we played games and visited.

On the way home, BJ and I went white water rafting and zip-lining in southern Colorado. Look at those rapids and clouds. Beautiful!

It was a lot of fun even though we were both apprehensive of the rafting. I had been zip-lining before in Cozumel so I was excited, but BJ was nervous. This half day white water rafting, half day zip-lining trip was a compromise between BJ and I, but I think we both enjoyed both activities. We were in the back of our raft, one on the left and one on the right. (The guide had us switch mid ride probably to even out the strength on both sides, so which side each of us is on changes.)

We were in a group of three rafts and for the most part, we were the middle boat. It was exciting and oh so much fun! The most exciting part was when the raft in front of us lost three passengers and paddles in a rapid and we did a rescue mission. We picked up one person and one paddle out of the rapids and the third boat did the same. It wasn't nearly as bad since we were on a milder rapid, but it was still an adventure. We will definitely be rafting again, maybe on a river with more or stronger rapids. Heidi, our guide, said the main difference as far as levels is how close the rapids are together. Generally on the harder trips, there is less time to recover between rapids so if there is a rescue situation, it is more serious. After we got back from rafting, we grabbed a quick lunch and then it was off to ziplining. BJ was pretty nervous about this.

After he made the first step off of the platform, he learned that it is a lot of fun and not nearly as scary as he thought. You'll have to know that BJ is not much of an adrenaline junky (as opposed to me) so I am thrilled we both enjoy something that is slightly adventurous. He won't ride roller coasters with me (or most of the them anyway) so theme parks are not an option for us until we have kids who I can convince to ride the fun rides with me. BJ and I kinda have a running joke as to what activity we will plan our vacations around. So now the list has been expanded to include para-sailing (for me), white water rafting, and zip-lining. I guess once we have kids we will plan the family vacations around them and what they would enjoy doing, but until then, we will plan around fun adventures. Overall, we had a blast and enjoyed our much needed vacation from all the emotional toil we've been going through. Back to grind tomorrow. I am praying I have the desire to actually get some work done. Coming back from vacation is hard sometimes, but we all have to do it. :)