I’ve had a CD of photos from our Arkansas River Tour in Cotopaxi, CO last month, sitting on my desk. I had not looked at the photos they took of our river trip until tonight.

The first image (above) is great! Rachel, Katie, James, Sabrina (my mother-in-law), Mia (river guide), and me (Roger) sitting geared-up in a raft on the shallow waters of the upper part of the Arkansas river near Cotopaxi, CO. That area is very beautiful, if you like rocks and mountains. We do.

James and Katie were psyched to finally do some river rafting after dad told them about the New River trips that he and mom had done separately as 20-somethings in West Virgina. So we all did a trip one afternoon with Mia, our guide.

This trip had several small rapids, mostly category 2s and 3s (not the 5s and 6s of West Virgina or the Colorado river). So the kids were not too jazzed… until we hit the ‘biggest rapid on the trip’. It was still small by other standards, but as it would happen, we got too far left on one large rock in the middle of the river, and it nearly stopped us in our tracks.

As you can see in the photos below, the top photo shows a happy family enjoying a nice day, great temperatures, and mostly calm water. See if you can spot any differences in facial expressions in the photo that follows… (funny!).

The river tour company also offers much larger trips on the same river, but through the area of the Royal Gorge just miles away from where we were. We had seen rafters and kayakers the day before while on our train trip through the gorge. That was when they decided a rafting trip would be fun, just not with such big rapids!

We had a great time on the trip, and Rachel said the kids are still talking about Colorado (my birthplace). So it was good all around (minus the bills).