White Water Rafting

Today we raft!  We were scheduled for an afternoon raft through Browns Canyon today so we had to be in Buena Vista (1.5 hours away) by 12:15.  Side note: I assumed Buena Vista was pronounced BWA-nuh Vista...which means "beautiful view" in Spanish, but the guy on the radio in town was saying BUE-nuh Vista.  Who knows?

We had a bit of a drive and a little extra time so we made a pit stop at the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Florissant, CO.  

Caleb was able to get his 4th grader park pass here so that alone was worth the stop.

The main attraction of this park is huge petrified redwood stumps.  34 million years ago, there were huge redwood trees in this area.  A cluster of volcanoes erupted and quickly buried the valley in 15 feet of volcanic debris.  Only the largest redwoods survived the initial lava flow and, eventually, they died as well and the unburied portions fell over and rotted away.  The volcanic mudflows that buried the stumps created just the right conditions to turn the wood into rock.  Very cool!

This is a small park with some trails and a nice pavilion over some of the stumps.  We didn't have much time so we just did a small loop trail and visited the pavilion.  

34 million year old petrified Redwood stump

Now it was time for some white water rafting!

Geared up and ready to go!

Our guide today was a girl named Roane.  We rafted on class I, II, and III rapids for about 10 miles down the Arkansas River through Browns Canyon National Monument.  Roane put us all to work paddling and would sometimes tell us to paddle stronger.  It was just the 5 of us (the Connors and Ryan), and Roane in our boat and Roane mostly acted as the rudder and yelled paddling orders.  We put Rodney and Ryan in the front to be our muscle.

We saw a young, male moose on the side of the river!

Morgan and the moose

the muscle!

Caleb and Roane

We all had a great time and got splashed by a lot of really cold water.  The canyon and river were beautiful.  Caleb's favorite rapid was named "The Toilet Bowl" because it kind of swirls you around.  Roane told us that a lady fell out of the boat recently in this rapid and floated through it.  When she got out the other side, she had pooped in her pants.  Caleb then joked, "Is that why it's called the toilet bowl?"  Good one, Caleb!   The kids had a lot more fun this time than they did last time we rafted, especially Caleb.  What a difference 3 years makes.

After a hard 2 hours of rafting, we went in search of ice cream.  We found some at Louie's Ice Cream in downtown Buena Vista (both the downtown and the ice cream place were charming).

While we had our adventures on the water, Mom and Dad had some adventures of their own.  They visited the old mining town of Cripple Creek and also went to Garden of the Gods.

A great day was had by all!