In the month between leaving work and starting grad school, Larissa did a bunch of outdoor adventuring. I joined her for a week of canyoning in Colorado, along with Maya and Josh.
It seemed to consistently rain in the afternoon, which frequently foiled our canyon plans. Some of the canyons had nasty-looking floodwater and were kicking small rocks over their falls. We did a lot of non-canyoning activities, including going to a super awesome mining museum and eating funnel cake. I tried to do a day hike, but couldn't handle the altitude and turned back.
Regardless, we managed to get in a handful of canyons. There was a super fun canyon called Durango Waterpark. After the first run, we learned that the whole loop only took about 30 minutes, and that all of the obstacles were safe to jump. We went back a few days later without any packs or technical gear. Josh, Maya, and I climbed down to the creek while Larissa waited in the car. After about 20 minutes of hiking downstream, we encountered a bridge that we hadn't passed before and realized that we had dropped into the wrong canyon. We went back upstream 20 minutes and found a very worried Larissa, who had also realized we had dropped into the wrong place. Thankfully, it is hard to make any committing moves without any gear. We went to the correct canyon and ran it twice through.
I have video footage from this trip, but I haven't had time to edit it yet. Once I'm done with the highlights reel, I will post it here.