Trailwest Day Three: Explorer Day

Tuesday morning we had another early wake up, as we were scheduled for a morning Jeep tour. We transferred car seats from the van to two Jeeps and toured part of Colorado-- from hot springs to chalk cliffs, we saw Mount Princeton, the Arkansas River, Cascade Falls and gorgeous countryside. It was an amazing on and off road adventure. The highlight was our stop in St. Elmo, a ghost town where the chipmunks and squirrels are so tame they will literally eat sunflower seeds directly from your hand. Daddy and P even laid down and sprinkled sunflower seeds on their chests for the critters to eat directly from them. Of course, my biggest bummer of the week was when I realized as I went to capture the Kodak moment and my camera refused to cooperate. My battery was dead!!! Needless to say, I was very disappointed, but tried to burn the image of giggling children covered in cute rodents into my brain. (After I posted this a very kind woman from our trip e-mailed some photos from her camera.)K spent the entire hour long Jeep ride back to the ranch begging to get a chipmunk as a pet at home.

Another fun story was K's insistence on the ride back that she saw a real kangaroo along the side of the road amidst a grove of trees. I asked her if maybe it was one of the “fluffy Colorado deer” and she insisted that it definitely was a kangaroo.

After the Jeep tour, we had lunch and then Daddy & I forfeited our whitewater rafting trip in order to insure the children took sufficient naps to make up for their late night/early morning. We laid down with them for 45 minutes, during which both grown-ups dozed off, but the children remained wide awake! We seized the opportunity to enjoy a date by dropping them off for a Kids Club trout fishing trip while we played frisbee golf (his choice) then Yahtzee (my choice). We then strolled down to the trout pond to get the kids for some quality time. They informed us that they were having so much fun they didn’t want to come with us, so we left them for another hour while we attempted a little fishing ourselves. (Their exact words were, "No! We want to go paint rocks instead!!!)