I have no idea why I don't feel comfortable posting here until an event is long gone, but there you have it. If it helps you, PRETEND I just got back from this trip.Just back from 10 days of adventures in the mountains of Colorado. Foremost among our activities were rafting, disc golf and geocaching, with a generous amount of decadent consumption sprinkled in.
We spent five days and two nights along some 50 miles of the Colorado River, fantastic by every measure. For my friends with experience in the North Country, you can equate rafting to canoeing, with the following subtle differences:
- Rafting is easier. If you aren’t the oarsman, you can swivel 360 degrees to take in the scenery, the wildlife and the sky at your leisure. There are no portages, so the limit to your packing is the confines of a raft, not your back. You can thus carry fresh meat, luxurious gear and a king’s weight of your favorite beverage.
- There is substantially more drama, from the cut of the canyons, to the thrill of the rapids, to the personalities of the folk you meet. Part of this is the unpredictability of the mountain river as opposed to the waltzlike rhythm of a canoe on a northern lake.
- And…there are no mosquitoes.
My heart is still with a canoe, but I’ve spent more hours at dusk and dawn within it’s tapered ends, so you can hardly let that be the judge.
Our companions were a Breckenridge family with two girls, 6 and 4. These girls are mountain born and bred and I’d put money on them in any venture. However, they weren’t as used to my blend of enthusiastic hyperbole as my own boys are. That taught me something about perspective.
In addition to wildlife highlights of river otter and golden eagle, we saw at Colorado National Monument, while camped on a 400’ ridge overlooking a canyon, what I later learned was a hare, but at the time believed was a jackrabbit.
You can probably hear my voice saying the following (with expletives removed):
“That was the biggest rabbit I’ve ever seen.”
“That thing was a monster.”
“I can’t get over that. The that jackrabbit was a man-eater.”
My own boys, Star Wars bred from three and constantly with me from the time they could talk, knew these comments for what you know them for.
But Mairi, the eldest mountain girl, looked at me with wide eyes as the sun was setting.
“I’m scared”
“Of what, Sweetie?”
…
…
“Jackrabbits”
…
Lesson learned.
I missed by bed, my bike and each of you, but that’s all.
