The Baboon Congress, Travel

Rafting!

71 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Sherrilee.

My daughter is a traditionalist. She wouldn’t admit to this of course, but just ask her what she wants to do on vacation and that will tell the whole story. You’ll end up with the same vacation you took last year. And the year before.

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So it didn’t surprise me that when we settled on Colorado as our vacation destination this summer, she wanted the same trip we took 3 years ago. I got the big glossy state tourism booklet in the mail and I asked her more than once what she wanted to do, but I’m not sure she looked at it. Same campground on the way out, same campground in Larkspur (south of Denver) and same activities on her list (Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, Aquarium in Denver and the Wildlife Sanctuary in Keenesburg).

Generally I’m OK with this, but after a rocky start to our trip (bad news from home on our second morning), I was just itching to make the trip a little different. After flipping through some of the pages of our glossy book, I asked Young Adult if she wanted to go rafting. You’d think that most young folks would jump at the chance to do something new and exciting. Nope. I had to talk her into it!

Raft3
That little hole-in-the-wall post-rafting pizza place

It was a slightly overcast morning, which turned out to be perfect – not too warm. We had wetsuits and helmets and “flotation devices” (they don’t say “life preservers” anymore), lessons in how to lean and lectures on what happens if you end up in the water. We both stayed in the raft, although not all our raft mates were that lucky and didn’t end up too sore from paddling. Then we had lunch at a little hole-in-the-wall pizza place up the street.

Since Young Adult hadn’t been super-enthusiastic prior to the rafting to begin with, I was happy to hear her say that the trip could have been a little longer. Of course this means that now rafting will be part of the tradition and any vacations to Colorado in the future will have to include it!

What do you like to do on vacation?

71 thoughts on “Rafting!”

  1. on our trips to yellowstone we do always have to stop at the worlds biggest cow snd the worlds biggest buffalo on the way as we pull off after tapping the brakes to un auto pilot our western bound soon to be driverless vehicle
    north dakota offers the best testing grounds in the world for a drone car program, get off at medora and at the end of the day you could pull in after a couple movies. a goid book and an hour ofctwo in the massage chair in the back seat
    on the way back rushmore and wall drug are the constants i would like to plug in the meedles around rushmore but we are on our way back and tryong to beat sundown or sun up or something. i missed the gas station coming back across south dakota at 1am because i just spaced out getting off at the exit. south dakota is good for thought
    ive been yocyhe corn palace and see no reason yo do that twice.
    when my kids were little they would yawn and moan and want yo know why we had to stop at the stupid old worlds largest cow.
    its a rule was my response
    its nice to have some rules in life

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    1. linda
      maybe spell checker with unautocapitalazation is what i need
      ill see if i can find it
      meanwhile i hope you all had fun with todays brain teaser from tims iphone keypad adventures
      i see to take this same adventursum trip almost daily

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      1. It’s sort of like a weather balloon. If you can make it through tim’s post first thing in the morning without getting a headache, nothing else will faze you the rest of the day. If you can also make some sort of sense of it, it’ll be a good day for solving life’s persistent questions.

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  2. Rise and Vacation Baboons!

    I love to have whatever schedule I want, to only be with people I choose, to walk everywhere, to sit in gardens and drink coffee, to watch DVD’s of old TV shows and movies, and to EAT. I love to do these things in almost any location which supports such activities: Charleston, SC, Amsterdam, Bergen Norway, Rome, Italy, Philadelphia, Savannah, GA, Santa Fe, NM, Uptown Minneapolis, or my house.

    Last week on vacation wore me out and I am still recovering. The week at art camp was grueling in the end: the teacher became very ill which made her miserable. There was another student who talked non-stop without end which made me miserable (and everyone else–the teacher finally instituted “Mindful Mornings” in which we could only whisper, to which I could only say thank you in a whisper of course).

    Then I drove to Iowa to see my mother who I had not seen for 2 1/2 months.

    Not the vacation I wanted.

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      1. The content and the artwork were not disappointing, so it was not a 100% failure like my famous ill-fated BWCA trip (a blog-worthy trip). The illness and talking were disappointing, though.

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    3. I am on a string of days in which I cannot escape my dreaded enemy chaos. Ten days of family celebration were very up days but in chaos. Then since then I need down time and cannot not get it for one reason or another. My vacation wish right now would be about five days abalone, which I cannot have, of course. Non stop talking: my two year old grandson has been behind the curve on talking. But he left here a continuous talker. Repeats, or tries to every thing you say. We faced timed Sunday night for an hour. He talked every second of the hour. I wonder how long that will be delightful to mom, dad, and nana?

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      1. i have one of those. i think i told the story here of the pee wees playhouse vcr tape with multipe episodes of pee wee with a 3 second blip of the beginning of garfield starting before the next weeks pee wee would kick in and then at the end there would be 3 seconds of pee wee again try pee wee on net flix or dvd and let me know

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        1. PeeWee had so many good characters. We still yell ‘Salesman!’ when the phone rings.
          And who can forget “Mekka Lekka Hi Mekka Hiney Ho”

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  3. Clyde, I did not even get to this blog yesterday. Your pictures of the mist on The Big Lake are exquisite. Thank you.

    I got the email about the pastel. I will respond–just getting to many things that backed up last week.

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  4. I’d go frickin’ crazy going to the same place every year and doing the same things. I do not understand the folks who go to the same resort or campground year after year after year after year after … well, you get the picture. (No offense intended, Sherrilee and others)

    Other than an annual solo BWCA trip and an every-ten-years anniversary trip to Toronto, I like to mix it up for vacation. . I need a fix of mountains once every 4-5 years, and I need to visit Lake Superior annually (sometimes just driving the North Shore is enough). And I guess I need a houseboat adventure every 4-5 years.

    But all theses involve different destinations and itineraries. Sure I love Banff, and the Black Hills, and Washington and Oregon wine country, but I always throw in a new destination in the area, a new experience, new restaurant, hotel, campground, whatever.

    Among our new vacation experiences are a trip in a motor home around Lake Superior, three visits to Europe, a trip to the Gatlinburg, TN area to stay in a cabin in a small town just outside Great Smoky Mountains National Park, a circumnavigation of the western half of the US and Canada by car and tent in one month, a three week camping road trip to Cape Cod and back, several visits to Oregon and Washington wine country, a trip to central Missouri where we bicycled a good portion of the Katy Trail, a road trip to visit relatives in Greensboro, NC which included a stop at the Museum of the American Quilters’ Society, and a couple of trips to Washington DC to visit the tourist sites there along with several Civil War battlefields.

    And of course, this doesn’t really count, but I do a golf junket to Palm Springs every year, mainly because my best friend lives there and golf is incredibly cheap and excellent in the desert in late May/early June. But golf is such an addiction that it doesn’t really feel like a vacation, more like getting my endorphin high from hitting a quality shot on a beautiful setting in many people’s version of paradise.Even then, we play different courses each year depending on the deals he can score and if our traditional faves are available and offering good deals at the time.

    Sheesh, I’ve rambled. Time for someone else to brag about their adventures. 😉

    Chris in O-town

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    1. No offense taken! Truly I do these traditional trips because of Young Adult. It’s such a short window of time that they are old enough to have an opinion but still want to vacation with you. Since I travel for work, the traditional vacations don’t bother me.

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      1. Speaking of museums–one of the coolest nearby cities is Kansas City, MO. Home to three excellent museums: Jazz, Negro Leagues baseball, and the Nelson Art Museum. Top those days off with some best of the best barbecue, and you have yourself a weekend in museum paradise. 🙂

        Chris in Owatonna

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  5. I go to museums. Any type will do. Natural history, art, beer, military, pioneer, science, architecture, beer, children’s, toy, history, religious, industry, beer, sports, beer, ethnic, beer, magic, music, and motorcycle. And lest I forget…beer museums.

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    1. I am with you on museums–love’em–especially the well-done kind like the Mississippi River Museum in Memphis–with the exception of military and engineering. Someone once shared his delight in an engineering museum in Germany. I nearly fell over in boredom at the very thought of such a thing.

      I am yawning just writing this.

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  6. I like to see new places and try new things. White water rafting is one things I’d love to try. Don’t really know why, I’m petrified whenever I approach even the smallest ripple in a canoe. Realistically, with my physical limitations, it’s not likely to come to pass.

    I’d love to go on a river cruise, traverse Europe on a small luxury ship stopping at some of the great cities along the way. I love the idea of not having to unpack and move to a new hotel every few days. Just stay put and enjoy the leisurely pace. Unfortunately, husband thinks that would be boring. May have to find myself another travel companion.

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    1. A Rhine River cruise is great! Much better than those Caribbean voyages. If you can schedule transportation beyond the ports, do that.

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    2. Fred Child of Performance Today hosted a trip down the Danube this past June that I longed to go on. It stopped at various historic concert halls from Prague to Vienna. When I was working I did bios on the guests that made me want to go even more — a variety of interesting folks. It was pricey and the timing wasn’t right…but thought of “someday” — might I put in my application for your travel companion on such a river cruise?

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    3. I think I’m with Hans on that one. Not so much because it would be boring– though it might, but because every cruise advertisement I’ve seen touts the amenities and pampering and being pampered gives me the creeping fantods. Also, I’ve never been on a boat that I wasn’t operating where I didn’t feel something of a prisoner.

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      1. Guess I’m not prone to the creeping fantods; they can pamper me all they want. Five days in Canyon Ranch Spa or some such facility would do me no harm either. Bring it on. 🙂

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      2. One of the things they don’t tell you in cruise ads is about the crush of people you’ll be vacationing with – especially on the big ships. In `98 I visited Rhodes; while my ship was fairly small, there were several other cruise ships in port that day. The island was overrun with us tourists – I remember being at Lindos that day and feeling like I was one of a million locusts. Not good.

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  7. No vacations for me, I’m a temp. No work, no paycheck. I stopped going to WisCon, my one out-of-town convention, when I realized I could lose a couple days of work or I could pay for the con, but not both.

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  8. Kind of depends. I love to do a big international adventure with lots of sightseeing and other activities (China, Thailand, India & Nepal, Kenya/Tanzania safari, Egypt, Southern Africa to name a few… heading to Peru/Machu Picchu later this fall). Some trips have involved visiting friends or family living outside the US (England, Iceland, Japan, Germany). I have a large framed laminated map of the world with pins indicating my travels. Even though I’ve been a ton of places, there are still so many blank areas. Most of these trips require a mini-staycation to recover from the vacation!

    Sometimes I just want a winter getaway to a warm, sunny destination. I have had repeated trips to Mexico (different locale each time), the Caribbean (8 cruises, different ship/itinerary each time), and a marvelous trip to French Polynesia.

    I generally avoid doing the same trip over and over. Two exceptions are a 5 day river rafting trip on the Green River in Utah which I have done 4 times…..these were high school graduation gifts to my nephew and 3 nieces. There have also been 4 trips to Tucson to visit a dear friend. We turn these into a road trip adventure to visit places like Sedona, the Grand Canyon, etc.

    OK….I’ve done my bragging.

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    1. I was just at a friend’s 80th birthday bash where several of her guests were friends met while trekking in different countries…Spain, the Alps, Hadrian’s Wall, Iceland, Ireland…she treks everywhere…Australia, Nepal, Italy, England. Her most recent trek was with her daughter around the Dingle Peninsula in June. What a woman. She has invited me to join her several times but first I have to deal with my inability to keep up with her…speed and stamina. She walks several hours a day at 10,000+ ft. Maybe next year in Norway?

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  9. I’m not much of a tourist but I love to go places to visit friends and family. One of my favorite “trips” was with my sister going around southern MN visiting historic places of the Dakota Conflict. Recent discoveries of family in Norway and Sweden has made for the sweetest of vacations. And they are great tour guides to boot. I didn’t take many vacations away when working, but now that I am retired, I am thinking more about it. Especially after last week’s sweet time in Leadville CO. Maybe same time next year with more time in the mountain cabin.

    I traveled a lot in my twenties and savor the memories. Looking at recent photos of Mykonos Greece, I was so grateful I was there in the sixties rather than now. I have an aversion to crowds and too much “upscaling.”

    But the fact that I survived the traffic in Denver makes me feel a bit smug, but still don’t like it!

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  10. Good morning. On most vacations we particularly enjoy finding good places to eat. If we get a place to stay with a kitchenette we will also cook our own meals and pack picnics. However, eating at our favorite spots or trying out new places is always a main feature of our vacations.

    Also, we like sight seeing and hiking. Just like tim, we did stop to see the world’s biggest cow, although we only did that once.

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    1. took years to figure out the trick to eating good is to eat local dishes. calvin trillen 20 years ago pointed out the b b q was best in places that serve it on brown paper. seafood near the sea, ma pa greasy spoons for the best hash browns ummmmmm

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  11. I’ve had only two vacations in my adult years. I’d love to have a third of fourth, and I could take an interest in just about any trip. The Museum of Dirty Socks? Bring it on.

    My job used to send me on many short (four- or five-day) trips. That taught me one powerful lesson. If you travel with disagreeable people, there isn’t a chance you’ll enjoy the experience. If you travel with good people, you’ll have a great time, no matter what happens. I’d enjoy the company of just about everyone who comes here often.

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  12. What is this “vacation” of which you speak?

    When I was a kid, my family often went “up north” for vacations. Then we moved up north. Boom – end of vacations.

    Now it’s a matter of money and being able to get away from responsibilities.. I like seeing new places and enjoyed seeing them from the train window when I traveled in March, but I also like to see and experience things without a train or car window in the way. I think the best vacations are where I can immerse myself in the natural world in some way – hikes up creeks, rambles along shores, etc. I hate to say it – but museums bore me. I can take them in small doses here and there, but they are not my favorite thing. (Although on a trip to DC, I enjoyed the many museums there, go figure.) I also like vacations where I do not have to cook.

    I’ve been fortunate to have my sister in duluth open her house to me on many occasions. Free lodging, she does much of the cooking, and beautiful stuff to see, some of which is right out the door. What’s not to like? Now that her house is pretty much all done being rehabbed after all the flood damage, I can go back there again soon instead of waiting another 3 years.

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  13. Like LJB, we rarely go on “vacation”. The last time was a trip to Nova Scotia with son and dil. Time and money have always been needed elsewhere. Husband and I were planning to meet up with daughter in Europe next May at the end of a month long seminar she was planning to take to South Africa. Now we hear that the seminar may not be offered, so she told us maybe the three of us could go to Europe anyway. Husband wants to go to Wales, and I want to explore northern Germany (Bremen and Emden) to see where my relatives came from. I mentioned this to son, who was somewhat hurt and asked why we didn’t ask him and dil to go, too. Their jobs at SDSU are over for the summer at that time of year, and dil will graduate with her Master’s degree, so it would be a nice way to celebrate (husband and I would, of course, have to pay for them to come with us). Well, of course I said “Sure, you can come”. Son speaks German, so he could be useful. We shall see how this all shakes out, but I forsee lots of future blog posts as this trip is planned and executed.

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  14. It used to be that everyone took vacations. My dad usually got two weeks. Lower-status employees got a week. The boss took off the whole summer.

    According to what I read, many folks are afraid to take vacations now. And if they do, they bring along the phone and spend half their vacation dealing with email. The research all points to the conclusion that taking time off actually does recharge batteries and make a worker more effective in the long run.

    On a related note, I heard yesterday that in many businesses it is considered abnormal to leave at the end of the day. That looks like shirking in the modern business culture.

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    1. I can’t speak for all of corporate America, but what you’ve described does happen here. Everybody has laptops and I think I’m the only one in my building who doesn’t take it home every night. Most people have pads as well, but my theory is that when the owner of my company (son of investor) wants to PAY for me to have a pad, then I’ll use one for work. Same with my phone. When owner wants to pay for me to have a cell phone for work, then I’ll use that phone for work. I rarely work at home after hours or on weekends. But I am absolutely in the minority about all this – most folks I know take work home, use their own technology for work, take calls/emails 24/7. And I don’t know anyone (myself included) who has taken 2 weeks of vacation in a row.

      Guess this makes me a Luddite, but it’s a label I’m proud to wear!

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  15. Writing from the library again… so sorry to miss yesterday, Clyde, with the gorgeous fog photos.

    I like a mix of new and old for vacations. France in May was all new, kind of exhausting, but I’d go back in a minute to do the things we didn’t get to do yet. Mostly I want to see everything – go to all 50 states, see outdoors and museums. And eat fabulous food – I’d like to be that couple on The Splendid Table that get to find all the out of the way places…

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  16. I must share this OT experience! This morning while walking my dog in the neighborhood, we encountered a Cooper’s Hawk chicklet drunkenly perched on a rock. It just looked at me. I examined it. It was about 8 inches tall. The feathers were interspersed with chicklet down and it was not afraid of me or on guard at all, as it will be after more life experience.

    The dog was sniffing something and missed the entire thing.

    This was a great way to start the day.

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      1. It appeared to be perfectly ok, just clueless about danger. I have seen other bird-chicks act this same way when they are newly out of the nest (once near Lanesboro a turkey vulture chick 3 feet tall, covered with down, and acting the same way. Ugliest bird I ever saw!).

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  17. Hmm. We know that like CG, vacations as such are not really part of my life at the moment, and while I enjoy travel, the expense incurred sort of detracts from any enjoyment of it I might have.

    I would cheerfully go the same place and do the same thing every year if it were something I could really enjoy.

    I used to have to travel to get to various work sites that I would stay at for at least 6 weeks, and while I did not usually have a lot of free time when there, there is a lot to be said for actually “living” someplace like Atlanta, Louisville or Santa Fe. One of my first stops was usually to find the local library and read about where I was, then seek out the not-so-famous historic sites I could get to without a car.

    These days, any day that does not involve having to know what time it is qualifies as a vacation. Bonus points if there is no car involved.

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  18. About five years ago, I went on a cruise for seven days by myself. An organization set up “Sailing for Credits” that would reap 20 CEU credits. This sounded ideal because I could vacation while earning a ton of credits, then expense the entire trip. This was the very first and last excursion I’d ever make by myself.

    Knowing that there’d be at least two dozen other therapists, I made the mistake of reassuring myself that once I got there, I’d have a built in group for comfort and camaraderie. This expectation was dashed immediately because everyone brought his/her significant other, best friend, or relative. Everyone except ME, that is. After each day in class, these pairs of people dispersed throughout the huge ship, never to be seen until the next day.

    I’d bump around the ship every evening, looking for company or friendly faces, and lonely as hell. I’m rarely lonely at home, but among 3,000 people I didn’t know, I was pathetically lonely. My separation anxiety flourished and there were hours of feeling utterly trapped. Imagine that? Three thousand folks, being a flaming extrovert, and having no one to hang around with.

    The final blow to my expectations was that for seven days, the sun never came out for even an hour. There went my vision of coming home tan in the middle of a Minnesota winter!

    Because I could witness how much fun everyone else was having, I made the decision to take my daughter and granddaughters on a cruise the following year. We’ve now been on three cruises as a 3-generation pack and loved every minute of it.

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  20. I’m not one to take vacations, unless someone invites me somewhere. A short car trip at most. When I do go somewhere, there’s no agenda except to spend some time reading and to eat good food. Just generally hanging out is enough for me.

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  21. Evening–
    Again, I can’t load the page at work. Tried 3 different computers and even had other people try.

    So I’m catching up now.

    I just never learned how to vacation very well. We’re working on that.
    We’re not OPPOSED to vacations, we just have a hard time scheduling the time for them.
    We like to relax on vacation. Sleep late, cable TV (we don’t have cable at home) new restaurants, see new things.

    All my siblings organized a family vacation for my parents 50th wedding anniversary. The all wanted to go someplace rural and get cabins and sit around bonfires. I said we wanted to be close to a big city and go see things. (Because we LIVE in the country and have bonfires regularly so what’s the point of having *that* vacation??).
    But that’s what we did. It was nice. Dale and Jim Ed played a polka for Mom and Dad.

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  22. Hans and I picked up one of his old friends at the airport tonight. She’s here on her first, three week vacation in the US. We were surprised to see her come through the gate for international arrivals without any luggage. She had somehow misunderstood some directions given to her by some official looking person, and had gone through the passport control, but skipped customs and her luggage. We had never experienced anyone doing that before, so weren’t sure what to do, but were directed to Delta Airlines’ lost baggage claim. Within a few minutes her large, purple suitcase arrived, and we were on our away – without going through customs; worked like a charm. Will have to remember that the next time I have something in my luggage to declare.

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