Lyons Outdoor Games

Before you start asking questions, yes I'm still pregnant. T-7 days until D-Day, but my money says this little stinker is going to be late. Would you like to hear about something else for a while? How about the Lyons Outdoor games! This is a yearly event in a little town called Lyons, north of Boulder and about halfway to Rocky Mountain National Park. It's a 3 day event but we were only able to catch the last day. I think that was probably a good thing because we had a strange bout of very cold, wet rainy weather all weekend and Fri/Sat sounded pretty miserable for spectators.

We were invited by our friends Amanda and Steve to come watch the action and I'm so glad we went! It was a long but very fun day watching the folks on the river. Below are some pics of our friends showing off their moves.

Steve lining himself up for the next gate:

Alex doing a wonderful advertisement for his kayaking gear:

The beautiful Hella watches the action upstream after finishing her run:

Scott tears thru his run and humbles the field:

One of the more entertaining competitions for the day was the Canine Cannonball, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Pooches big and small are judged for their style and distance for leaping recklessly into a pond after all manners of balls and toys. It was pretty amazing how crazed these dogs were to jump in the water again and again:


Back to the human based competitions, we spent quite a lot of time enjoying the free-style kayak competitions. This is a competition where kayakers in playboats do insane tricks in a standing feature on the river. I learned about fun moves like the "space godzilla", "phonics monkey", and "McNasty". Please don't ask me what they look like; all I know is these dudes do all manner of cartwheel-ish acrobatics in the water and I am perfectly content to stay on the shore and watch:



All in all, it was a great day! Many thanks to our friends for including us landlubbers in the festivities.


(click on any photo to access more pics in my online album)