Dear Teacher, this is what I did on my summer vacation...

"Dear Teacher,
This is what I did on my summer vacation..."

(Click on the photos if you want to see them larger)

We drove to Denver and decided to go to Casa Bonita.  It has just about the world's worst food, but an interesting show including indoor cliff diving, etc.

The next day we went for a drive in the mountains above Denver and stopped at Red Rocks Amphitheater just to see what it looked like inside

Dinner at Texas Roadhouse with Kevin, Amy and Brayden.

The next day we left Denver and drove thru Boulder and Estes Park and on to Rocky Mtn National Park.

Rock Mtn National Park

Rocky Mtn N.P. - Above the tree line near 12,000 ft elevation.

Even though we're all "flat-landers" from Missouri, these roads didn't make us too nervous.

We left record-breaking heat in Missouri with lots of days above 100 degrees this summer, and it got down to 43 degrees with a big hail storm while in Rock Mtn N.P.

After we drove thru Rocky Mtn National Park we stopped in Grand Lake.  It was very beautiful and we had a nice lunch.  That night we stayed near Vail, Colorado.

The next day we drove from Vail to Leadville, Colorado.  This was a bridge between Vail and Leadville.

 

This is the "Matchless Mine" a famous old silver mine in Leadville.

The boys did NOT strike it rich while at the Matchless Mine.

On top of Independence Pass.  If you click the photo, you can see the switch-back road in the background.  (The road at Rocky Mtn National Park, didn't really bother anybody, but Independence Pass did have a few white-knuckle corners).

Two days in a row over 12,000 ft elevation.  The air sure is THIN up there for us St. Louisans!  (The elevation is only about 400 ft where we live).

As we were just driving into the outskirts of Aspen, we saw this bear along side the road.

It's normal to shoot a 50 caliber rifle 1,000 yards off your deck, right?  It is where Rick grew up!

All the boys had to take a turn...

Even Spencer hit the target dead center at about 1,000 yards.

The next day we went white water rafting on the Green River near Vernal, Utah

The rapids were about the right level for us.  Not too scary, but still exciting.

Spencer, Michael and Michelle our river guide.  She made the whole trip even better.

On the calm parts of the river, we had water fights with the rafts in our group.  We were the best pirates, because we took over another boat and took all their oars!

We stopped for lunch here.

Spencer and Michael swam in the river and then walked upstream and came thru some rapids just floating and swimming

The float trip took us thru Dinosaur National Monument, so after we got out of the river, we went to the Dinosaur Quarry.

Our rafting trip was 9 miles long and took us from "Rainbow Park" to "Split Mountain"

We stopped and saw these petroglyphs on the way to river rafting.

As we put this together we realized that we didn't take a lot of pictures of cousins, aunts & uncles, and grandma and grandpa.  We visited all of Alisa's family that live in Utah, but don't have many photos to prove it!  We'll try to do better next time.

Rick was able to spend a little bit of time with his sister as well.  It was great to see all the relatives and spend time with them.

It was an 11 day trip and was great fun. We had another great family vacation.

The car load does seem to keep getting smaller and smaller each year, we just had two kids on this trip.  Maybe at some point, the numbers will start to go back up if the grandkids go on some vacations with us?

Dear Teacher, that's what I did on my summer vacation.