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.

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!

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?