Colorado Day 2

Waking up, Steve and I were both more sore than we were when we went to sleep.  Neither of us slept that well because of our aches and pains from the previous day's adventures.  Boo hoo, it doesn't matter how much we hurt, it was time to move on.  We woke up around 7:30 to drive to Kodi Rafting Post in Buena Vista, CO.  Now everytime I've been in CO, the only reason I have ever ventured off of I-70 was to head to a ski mountain.  This time I was going to somewhere I had no idea what to expect.  On the way, we drove through Leadville, which claims to have the highest everything because it is the highest town in the country at 10,200 ft.  After Leadville, we hit the headwaters of the Arkansas River, which we were going to be rafting on in a couple hours.  This was pretty cool because it was just flat plains surrounded by gorgeous peaks.  And this scenery continued all the way to Buena Vista, where the peaks were the collegiate peaks.  They are a range of 14,000 ft peaks, that are pretty popular for hiking.  After checking in and Steve getting changed into his wetsuit/drytop outfit, we loaded onto an old school bus and headed for the put-in location.  Apparently, this is the most commercially used stretch of river in the world.  It seemed like it because there was tour company after tour company set up along this area.  So after meeting our guide, Kristen, we headed into the water.  Overall, the experience was fun, but Steve and I were expecting non-stop intense rapids, just to continue with the theme of our trip.  Instead it was a series of rapids, followed by calm water.  I guess it was ideal then for beginners, but it was still a good time.  The best rapid was called "Big Drop."  When we hit this, our raft went pretty much vertical and I thought we were going to flip.  Steve thought the same so he decided to lean into the middle of the boat when we hit it.  What a baby.  I got soaked from some of the splashes, and even though the water was ~50 degrees, it felt so good.  The trip ended, we got a ride back to the car, and then headed to Biggies Subs in Buena Vista for lunch.  After lunch it was onto our 14er.  We got thrown off course a little because of road closures, so what should have been an 80 minute drive turned into an over 2 hr drive.  But when you are used to driving 8 hrs/day, this was no big deal.  We finally got to our exit and the road for the trail head.  Now last year we ran into some sketchy roads to find our trail heads.  This one was the worst, it was actually unpassable for the old Ford Focus.  It was uphill, and washed out like crazy, it seemed like only a Jeep or high clearance 4x4 of some sort would make it.  So we couldn't make it to the trailhead, hmm.  We didn't really know what to do, so we headed to the closest exit with a hotel and tried to sit in the parking lot and get wireless internet to find which other mountain we should go to.  After some slow research, we found a hike that was pretty close.  The road to this one was passable but had construction and was a very slow drive.  When we finally got to our campsite, it was well worth it because it very pretty besides the swarms of mosquitoes.  We set up camp, chilled for a while, ate our first dehydrated meals, made a fire, had some philosophical talk, and then went to sleep.  Basically, a typical camping night, but it was fun.  The alarm was set for 6 AM to start our climb to the top of the world.