We were up bright and early Tuesday morning. We had a fun filled day planned and needed to be out of the house by around 8:30. Since we were all still on Central time, it wasn't too hard to get us all moving.
We headed up to the base of the mountain and Julie and I took the kids to the adventure park while Shawn and Kevin went on the zipline tour. The adventure park had tons of activities for the kiddos to do. . .a playground, mini golf, trampolines, rock climbing, air bag jump, and the tin cup mining company. Shawn and Kevin ended up being the only 2 on their zipline tour so it went pretty fast and they were only gone about an hour. After hearing all about it, Julie and I couldn't wait to get our turn on the course later in the week. After meeting back up with the boys we took the kids to the children's museum that's also at the base of the mountain. It was pretty small, but no one was in there and the kids loved it. We only stayed about an hour before we had to get ready for our next activity.
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| Cousins (Natty: 7, Emmy: 5, Lauren: 9, Evan: 3) |
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| He was so unsure at first and cried getting into the harness, but a few jumps later. . . |
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| . . .pure joy! |
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| Our kids loved the tin cup mining company. They got a bag of dirt to poor into tray and they had to wash away the dirt to see what kind of fossils and gems they could find. Em and Evan did this activity twice while we were there. |
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| Our kids weren't big enough to rock climb, but Natty and Lauren were. |
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| The children's museum. |
We made a quick pit stop at the house for lunch before splitting up again for the next activity. Kevin and Shawn headed out for a white water rafting ride on the Taylor River. It had some high level rapids and not safe for the kids. Julie and I took the kids to float the Gunnison River. Our tour was considered a scenic float tour, but once I saw the river and those rapids I knew that what they considered a scenic tour and what I considered a scenic tour were a bit different. The river was close to it's peak water level and it was moving fast in some areas. Our guide, Nina seemed a little nervous when she realized she was getting 4 young kids and only 2 adults in her raft. She said to Julie and I, "I hope you 2 are ready to work because I'm going to need all your help to paddle." Umm, say what? I thought we would just be floating and wouldn't even have a paddle in our hands. When they were going through all the safety instructions, I was so close to telling Julie, that I thought we should skip it. I was very hesitant thinking what have I just gotten myself, my 5 year old and my 3 year old into! Ha. We got the kids all situated on the bottom of the raft (we felt safer with them there vs. sitting on the benches) and off we went. I was terrified when we went down the first rapid and kept telling Em and Evan to hold on as tight as they could. But you know what, once we got through the first one I realized that we could totally do this and it was actually going to be so much fun! We all got wet, but it felt good in the hot sun. We paddled for about an hour and then pulled over and got out to have a drink break. Evan LOVED the first half of the ride and Em was very hesitant. Totally opposite of what I was expecting. Things seemed to turn a corner though when we stopped for our break. We could see what was coming up and those rapids were BIG! I got really nervous again and I think that rubbed off on Evan. We hopped back into the raft for the second hour of our trip. We made it over those huge rapids and you know what, we made it through them and they were the highlight of the trip. Evan's fear took over though and he just started crying. Poor guy. He was about done at this point, but luckily he hung on and pulled it together. Em, Lauren and Natty started getting brave and even sat up on the benches with us for a while. That's when they really started having fun. When we were finished I knew that this was going to be the highlight of our trip. I'm so glad that I pushed away my fears and went through with it. It really was so much fun!!
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| This one made me laugh. . .you can't even see the kids in the raft. |
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| Poor Evan just started crying. |
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| Working hard through those rapids. |
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| We made it through the largest one. . .a serious of 3 really large rapids. |
We made our way back to the tour company and I talked to Shawn on the phone. He said their river was so high and fast that they only got to be on the river for about 20 minutes. He did say their rapids were huge and they had to paddle the entire time, but all I could think was how jipped they got and they should have come with us. We had the perfect balance of rapids and floating and we were on the raft for a full 2 hours.
Julie and I headed back to CB (from Gunnison) after our raft trip and this is when our other adventure started. About 10 minutes into the 30 minute drive, Julie's car started giving her an error message about the 4 wheel drive. We pulled over, read the manual and decided it was fine to keep driving the rest of the way to CB. Well about 5 minutes later the car started to make a terrible noise and it sounded like the tire was about to fall off. We pulled over, called the boys and Shawn ended up coming to rescue us. He drove Julie's car back to CB while I drove ours. Thankfully we were able to get it into the shop and they were able to have it fixed the next day!!
We were supposed to have dinner reservations that night, but since the car troubles delayed us we ended up moving them to Wednesday night and just picking up some to-go Chinese food instead. We topped the night off with some smores and then put the kids to bed. After a long and busy day we were all tired and ready to get some rest!
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