The Accidental Athlete: Four, Five and Six

I can't believe how fast our time in Crested Butte has flown by and that we're already leaving tomorrow. I know I've neglected this blog for the past couple of days. We have posted some photos on Facebook, but I also know that a couple people are following our trip solely through this blog, so I wanted to get something up here, even though we have a busy day today.

Remarkably enough, it looks like we are going to finish our Colorado trip with only one day of riding. It's kind of a bummer, but it gives us an excuse to come back again soon. I'm going to start saving my pennies as soon as we get back to Michigan. I'd like to just stay, but I haven't gotten anyone to bring my puppies to me and I miss them tons. Besides, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of jobs for our career paths here (or lodging we can afford). We are still scheming, though, and won't give up quite yet.

Tuesday we went on our first rafting trip. It left from Gunnison, which is a larger town about 30 miles away from Crested Butte. I'm not crazy about Gunnison. It has a lot of amenities that you'd need to use every once in a while if you lived in Crested Butte (supermarkets, gas stations, etc.) and it still has mountains and scenery far in the background, but the commercial enterprises mean that it doesn't have the charm of Crested Butte. It doesn't feel so isolated and otherworldly. I finally made my first trip to Sonic ever in Gunnison, so I don't have to feel deprived any longer.

We did, however, enjoy our float trip on the Gunnison River. The river was very beautiful. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures, since they discouraged us from taking cameras. I should have. My camera would have been fine, but they kind of freaked me out about it a bit. I'm glad we took this rafting trip. Like I said, the scenery was good and it was a good intro to rafting for us since we'd never been. By the end of the trip, we were wanting more and searching for a bit more excitement, so we scheduled a whitewater trip for Thursday.

We were supposed to ride again on Wednesday, but Chris was feeling really crappy and stayed in bed for most of the day. I finally got tired of sitting in he hotel and ventured out on my own. I had a late lunch and wandered around town.

Bears are a big problem around here. They are constantly getting into people's trash and even breaking into their houses to steal food.

I sampled this interesting concoction at the bar late Wednesday night. It's called a Frank Cheesy. It's a hot dog wrapped in bacon and deep fried, with nacho cheese and onions. I don't know why, but we've gotten into the habit of taking pictures of our food lately.

On Thursday we had an early lunch at this establishment before heading out on our Taylor River rafting trip.

These were pita nachos. Again with the food pictures.

This dog's owners were at the bar having lunch on the patio. It didn't take him too long to figure out he could climb up there, too.

We drove out into Taylor Canyon for our second rafting trip.

A lot of people wore wetsuits on the trip. Chris and I chose not to because it was our hottest day in Colorado so far (in the 80s). We were glad we didn't wear the wetsuits because we were plenty warm, but we were also glad we wore these neoprene booties under our shoes.

Class III rapids, baby! We had a blast.

Taylor Canyon

We ended the day with a huge meal at Maxwell's, the steakhouse in town, followed by cocktails at our favorite CB watering hole, the Forest Queen.

Real whole anchovy on the Caesar salad

I ate almost all of this huge Ribeye. There were mashed potatoes and haricorts verts (green beans, I know this because I minored in French in college) hiding underneath the steak.