The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Ps 19:1 
Our first real big adventure was the hail storm we went through in Kansas. Very interesting, and a little bit too exciting. I've never seen such huge hail stones and never knew how loud hail sounded on the roof of a motorhome. Furthermore I didn't realize how loud they sounded when breaking through the roof vents! After the storm was over we spent an hour at an rv dealer getting the vents fixed. I don't like Kansas. Here's a picture of my little sister holding a hail stone we found wrapped up in the curtain twenty minutes after the storm.  The view from the top of Pike's Peak. It was quite cold. 
Wide open spaces....  
The snow covered mountains were awesome. 
I was so impressed with the Black Canyon. It's 1700 ft to the canyon floor and at most places you could walk right up to the edge. It made you feel dizzy if you looked down too long.   We did get a little bit of trail riding in. That proved to be a little interesting since I don't ride often. It was a lot of fun! 
My father enjoying fishing. 
We rented a jeep one day and drove in the mountains. Most roads we ended up going back down because they were still covered with snow, much like this road here. 
Finding different ways to entertain ourselves.   
One of our favorite stories is about our whitewater rafting experience on the Uncompahgre River. Before embarking we were given this huge safety speech on what to do if by chance you should fall out of the raft. Ten minutes into the trip our guide got ejected and flew out the side of the raft. I wish I could have seen our expressions because I remember what the guides expression was when she came up, a mixture of determination and panic. The youngest member of the clan kept saying "our guide fell in our guide fell in." They never told us what to do in that situation. Thankfully she followed none of the safety rules and lunged back into the raft and all was well, although for a few seconds we thought she was going to fall back out because of the force she landed upon her entrance. Aside from: the hailstorms, weird mountain roads, our GPS failing to recognize how big we were and how small some roads were, a few DQ's being closed at 9, 70 being closed in Iowa because of flooding, my brilliant move of dropping Shane's camera in a creek, and arriving home at 1:30 Sunday morning, our trip was great. | 
