Buena Vista Part I

For summer vacation this year we went to Colorado with Josh's parents and sister. We stayed primarily in Buena Vista, then headed to Alamosa on our own for a couple of nights. It was such a fun trip-wonderful mix of hanging out and being adventurous. Plus some good food mixed in there!

We arrived on Friday June 30th after staying the night in Kansas with Joe and Claudia on our way out. After being in the car so long the kids were pumped to get out and explore the beautiful house we stayed in. 

Em and Meranda flew in to Denver so Josh's parents picked them up and they arrived shortly after we did. 

Ordered pizza for our first night from Elkhorn Pizza. This place was delicious! 

The house had a garage filled with games-ping pong, pool, darts. The kids were in heaven!

AND a hot tub.

We took a lot of walks down to the big river, which was about a half mile away.

SATURDAY

On our first full day we packed up to go see a couple of sites nearby between Mt. Alero and Mt. Princeton. 

First stop was this wildlife viewing area...we saw a lot of prairie dogs.

Next up was a pretty neat waterfall you could basically see from the road. 

Finally made it to our destination-Saint Elmo, which is a ghost town up in the mountains. Elevation 10,000 feet!

This was a cool stop and the views were absolutely gorgeous. The kids bought some feed and let the chipmunks crawl all over them. Kinda gross to me but they had a blast. 

On the way down the mountain Josh talked us into going to Sheep Canyon to see if we could spot some wildlife. It was pretty much a bust but the views were pretty. The hike to get to this area was rough!

After all that activity in the morning we somehow still had energy, so we went to downtown Buena and walked around. 

Later that evening Ike and I walked to the river and took some pictures. 

SUNDAY

Sunday morning we got up and went for a hike on the Barbara Whipple trail to get views of Buena Vista from the hills. 

After our hike we cooked breakfast and had a mini sermon before resting up for our big adventure that afternoon. 

White water rafting! We rafted down the Arkansas River and experienced up to level 3+ rapids. It was crazy, we about froze because the water was so so cold and we really had to work together as a team! We had so much fun and the rapids were awesome! We went through American Adventure Expeditions and would highly recommend them.

Divana's seat had a hole in it so we had to keep stopping so our guide could air it back up!

The after pictures-we got absolutely soaked!