Russ hasn’t stopped saying “Wow!” since he got here on Sunday afternoon. The next day, he eagerly joined me for a hike. For some reason, the trail I’d walked just a day before had me confused, and we walked back for a way along the dirt road. Later, he was busy tuning up his bike, so I set off with Moe for a late afternoon hike out a new trail. This one, on a south-facing slope, gave me a chance to see some early cactus flowers and others:
We just can’t get enough of the scenery! Neither of us has been through this area before (I visited my sister in Boulder once, years ago, but did not go exploring), so we are like little kids, exclaiming over every peak and cliff.
My bird list is growing, with new sightings of spotted towhees and western scrub jays.
Once Russ decided to hang around until Thursday, to avoid the rain expected on Wednesday, I started making plans to do something special once the holiday weekend crowds were gone. There are whitewater rafting and zip line tours galore—we decided on rafting, as we’ve been zip lining but never rafting. Tuesday morning, we headed out bright and early to take a half-day whitewater rafting tour.
It was a blast! The Arkansas River runs through the Royal Gorge, spanned by a spectacular suspension bridge, just outside of Cañon City, and the rafting company was only a few miles from camp. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Even Russ loved it, and he’s not much of a water person. Me, I love anything to do with water!
We could have been the grandparents of everyone else on this tour. Anyone even close to our age had gone off on the more ’family friendly’ trip. We were pretty proud of ourselves for tackling four Class IV rapids, along with a slew of Class IIIs. One of the three rafts (not ours) flipped, dumping everyone in the river. Everyone got rescued quickly, and all were OK. And everyone that had to swim got to write their names and thoughts on the bus!
After rafting, we had a huge, delicious lunch and headed over to the nearby KOA to take some much needed hot showers. By the time we made it back, the dogs had plenty to say about being left for so long, but they were quickly pacified with dinner. We both fell asleep, exhausted by all the adrenaline of the morning. When we woke, there was a large herd of mule deer (I counted at least 12, including three bucks with new antlers in velvet, and one fawn) calmly feeding around our campsite. We watched them for quite a while: there are very few campers here now, so there wasn’t any commotion to spook them. You’ll have to go to Russ’s site (www.russloomis.com) to see the pictures: I was too busy being fascinated to think of photos!
Oh, AND in the middle of all the rafting excitement, I managed to spot an American Dipper! These birds only live along swift-running streams and rivers (they actually go underwater and walk along the river bottom to find small aquatic insects), so I was delighted to see one!