The epic Colorado river was my means of travel this past week, 8 campers Kathleen, a rafting guide, and I rode the rapids created by the unusually high 4200 cfs. The first day we all crammed into a typical raft, camping our first night at a river town. Rancho del Rio, is a small village mostly composed of tents and pop-up mobile trailers. It has two rafting companies stationed at the site, a small convience store, and a BBQ "restauraunt". The village being stationed on the Colorado with a nice eddy along its shore provided a great place to chill in some inner tubes and ride a small current.

The rest of our trip we used duckies which are similar to a two person sea kayak but they are inflatable. These provided more freedom on the river and added some excitment to the float trip. While in the duckies we faced class 2 rapids which were managable but exilirating in the duckies. Our group of campers consisted of two males and six ladies. Six ladies all roughly 14 years old, which with the age comes a great ability to shreek whenever startled or scared. The bugs did their job and made sure to keep the ladies shreeking to a maximum.

Luckily the Colorado days are starting to resemble summer days, reaching mid to high 70's, which is nice when rafting on a 40ish degree fresh snowmelt river. Not only has the warm weather arrived but with the weather, the wildflowers have begun to spring up everywhere, providing an impressive landscape.

Independence day provided a great time to let loose and celebrate the founding of our nation. We camped in the mountains that create the Winter Park valley and were able to see the towns fireworks through a clearning in the trees. It was a great show accompanied by some great USA tunes and camp songs which are always bound to be sung at full volume during any time of celebration with camp counselors.

This week I am gearing up to go rafting once again, same river, but a new co-counselor and campers. Should be another great week in the sun and on the water.


Just finished book numero dos: The Last Season
Very incredible book; highly recomended if you would like to read about the Sierra Nevadas and Backcountry wilderness.