Royal Gorge

We started the day back at Garden of the Gods so I could buy a book entitled "Roadside Geology of Colorado". We ended up with a couple of other books, history books in which Michelle was interested. They look good enough that I might even try them out.

We proceeded towards Canon City where Royal Gorge is located. Its really a bit of a cheesy tourist trap, but has some inherent, natural beauty if you look beyond the gift shop and carousel. It was a bit pricey to enter the "park", but once in, you have free reign of the place. Only the Skycoaster (more on this later) and the burro rides are not included in your entry fee.

We began by walking across the bridge. On the bridge, you are roughly 1100 feet above the Arkansas River. It's quite a view! We could see rafters floating down the river. I think we might have to plan a rafting trip in the future. It looked like a really good time. At least it looked that way from about a quarter mile up. 

The bridge is the highest suspension bridge in the United States. It is roughly as long as it is high above the river. It is held up by 2100 strands of galvanized wire and the deck of the bridge is made of wooden planks. You could see the river below between the planks. We also could see the movement of the bridge as it swayed in the wind. This was a little bit disconcerting but they don't call it an "amusement" for nothing! Of course I could only think of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge the entire time. My family agrees that science has ruined my life and may be ruining theirs as well.

Once across, we made our way up to Point Sublime. A lookout that happens to be right next to the highest Skycoaster in the United States. If you've never seen a Skycoaster, it is two very tall towers with a steel-cabled swing strung between them. Riders lay down in a "pouch" made of canvas and are pulled to their highest point (about 100 feet) by a third cable. One of the riders has to pull the latch to release them and they swing forward and back, reaching speeds of up to 50 mph, in this case. 

By "in this case", I mean JC rode this thing! He was going to ride alone, but since they weren't doing any single riders (I'm sure because they were so crowded) he was paired with a complete stranger. He seemed okay with that. He said it was a lot of fun and he was glad he did it. I can't imagine what they felt like being what must have seemed like in the middle of the canyon, 1200 feet above the river held up by nothing more than a couple of pieces of steel rope.

We "hiked" up to the line for the Aerial Tram to get back to the other side of the canyon. As we are not accustomed to walking with changing elevations, it may or may not have winded some of the people in our family. I can say with absolute certainty that I definitely got winded. It didn't help that one of our group was recovering from an injury sustained in a fight with the curb of the sidewalk a couple of days ago in Denver.

We boarded the tram not noticing the plaque in the picture on the left. We moved slowly out from the boarding area and began to pick up speed. The operator said something, but I was too nervous to hear. Suddenly the car came to an abrupt stop. The operator said something else, but all I caught were the words "power surge" and figured something must have gone wrong. Not pleasant! Especially the uneasy waiting as the car simply sat there. We found out later that JC was more nervous on the tram than the Skycoaster. That's good because I was pretty nervous, too!

We finally began to move and picked up speed. We moved about 2200 feet across and were about 1200 feet above the bottom of the canyon. It was a great experience, but I was surely thinking about the maximum tension in the cables, all the while estimating the mass of each of the 34 people in the car as we moved across. I looked at the angles of the cables and thought about tension the entire time. I was able to be somewhat cognizant that I had a camera in my hand and should take a few shots. Basically, I hung my hand out the window and pressed the button. So, if you can call that "taking pictures"...

Scariest Train Ride Ever

Yes, I'll say it. I was scared. No one else in the family was even the least bit nervous, but there were times when all I could think about was falling. Or rolling all the way back down the mountain. It was awesome!

We started the day in The Garden of the Gods. Its a park, run by the City of Colorado Springs that consist of some very large protrusions of sedimentary rock, laid down by an ancient sea, something like 30 - 60 million years ago. We drove all through the park and walked a bit. We saw some beautiful rock formations. I thought a lot about geology and weathering the entire morning. It was a great way to spend a couple of hours. The pictures certainly don't do it justice. These rock formations were huge. I took one picture of Pike's Peak down there and then one of the Garden from the Summit of Pike's. They were huge!

After spending the morning, we drove through a wonderful little mountain town, Manitou Springs. It was one giant touristy, motel-town. We decided this might be a good place to come back to visit. Maybe a family reunion or just to hang out for a while. We went ahead and found where the railway station for the climb to the Summit was and then wasted some time just dreaming about where we could live if we bought the old gas station to convert into a Red Dirt BBQ location. 

We caught the 4 o'clock train to the Summit of Pike's Peak. I gotta say the climb was intense. I continually thought about mechanical failures. Fortunately, we were on the mountain side of the train; meaning we were not on the sheer mountain side. I might have had to move. The climb up was spent hearing about history and I was disappointed that there was no mention of Nikola Tesla; especially in light (no pun intended) of the fact that we passed the oldest known Hydroelectric Station west of the Mississippi River. (its well known this was one of his specialties.)

At the Summit (14,110 ft) we had Summit Donuts, a specialty, and a combination of water, hot chocolate, and cappuccino. I estimate the temperature was somewhere near 50 degrees with winds blowing about 15 mph. As we were dressed for 75 degree weather, it was a bit chilly. Being the ultra hot-natured folks that we are, we simply grinned and enjoyed it! We got to hang out on the Summit for about 25 minutes before the 1.5 hour long descent. We certainly enjoyed spending the day together. JC insists that yesterday (Rocky Mtn. Nat'l Park) was his favorite part of the trip, but I suspect he had a good time today. I think we all did. 

Don't forget to check out our new traveling companion, Rocky over at his blog, Rocky Travels.

Denver to Colorado Springs

We left Denver at 11 a.m. today. We thought we'd be in Colorado Springs by about sunset. You know, check out Garden of the Gods at the best time of day to view it. Boy were we wrong! We took a little side trip up to Boulder, Estes Park, through the Rocky Mountain National Park along Trail Ridge Road, then to Winter Park, along Shadow Mountain Lake, back to Denver (by this time it was about 9 p.m.) and then to Colorado Springs. Talk about a side trip! While it was only about 170ish miles, our little side trip lasted most of the day!

When we left the hotel in Denver, it was beginning to get a little warm, maybe 85ish degrees and the Sun was shining. During our ascent, things definitely began to cool off. We could also see clouds on top of many of the mountains. Of course, we had no idea whether or not we were going to drive any of those peaks, as we didn't have any maps that should individual peaks. I did actually turn the heat on at one point!

Once above the tree line, we were in Arctic Tundra (this isn't a joke, that's what the landscape is called). It consists of some evergreen type ground cover and was dotted with some very colorful flowers. We were near the lava cliffs, almost at the highest point of our day when we ran across a herd of elk. This resulted in a major traffic jam, as all of the other cameras insisted on getting pictures, too. I would estimate there were probably more than a hundred but I didn't see the majority until we were pulling away.

It was about this time of our day that it began to rain. And sleet. I might have even seen a snowflake or two! We encountered some kind of precipitation, off and on, for the rest of the day, until we got down out of the mountains. It kept things cool and made for some fantastic views!

Just after we left our elk friends, we got to a place where we met our new traveling companion, Rocky. We made it to the Alpine Visitor's Center. Rocky called to us from the shelf in the gift shop and we had pity on him. He explained he has a wandering spirit and his soul was being crushed, looking out the windows each day, admiring distant peaks. We couldn't resist his cute face. You can check out Rocky's travels here. (He insisted on his own travel blog!)

After Rocky got in the car, it was all downhill. Not figuratively, we literally drove downhill the rest of the day. Not much further along the road is the Continental Divide. We stopped and got the requisite pictures. It was interesting to think about the path the water follows from that point, one side to the Atlantic and one to the Pacific.

We made it to Winter Park where we decided on a dinner break. It was leftovers from Jack-N-Grill for JC and I. Michelle and Jess decided on pimento cheese sandwiches. Yum!

We continued down, down, down. It was about dark when we got back to Denver, so now that we are in Colorado Springs, we have no idea what it looks like. We are excited to see what the day tomorrow (Friday) brings at Royal Gorge and Garden of the Gods. Rocky says he can't wait for all of the things he'll see from the top of the rearview mirror.

Day Five from the Mile High City

Wednesday, June 30th

Today was our last full day in the very cosmopolitan city of Denver. I had several workshops to do this morning so Michelle and the kids didn't leave the hotel until I got done about 2:30. As a side note, the workshops I attended were the best of the entire conference.

When we did leave the hotel, we drove over on Federal Blvd. to find a good place to eat. Of course, Michelle had done some scouting ahead of time and we settled on Jack-N-Grill at 24th and Federal. Its reputed to have the best Green Chile' in Denver and has been voted as such for many of the past 10 years. They also have some terrific burgers and JC and I can attest to that fact.

We (and when I say we I mean @mishelleyb) ordered more food than we could have eaten in a day. Yay for leftovers! We started with the standard of chips and salsa. Their salsa was very american (tomatoey, just how I like it!) with some extra cilantro.

Jessica opted for a Green Chile' burrito. According to her, "it was really, really, really, really, really good!"

Michelle chose a half bowl of Green Chile' with beans (the bowl was as big as my head, I'd hate to see a full bowl) and a taco sampler. Her sampler included a barbecue pork type taco, shrimp with guacamole, a special pork style taco (Carne Adobada), and a shredded beef taco. While maybe not up to par with last night's taco fiesta, she did say "they were all good".

JC chose the "you'd better be hungry" aka "The Dez", named after one of the owner's children. It was about a pound and a half of meat with cheese with bacon. For the side order, he and I both chose "frings". JC said of his burger, "It was good."

I got "the Juarez", which is a burger with green chiles, 10 oz. of beef, a hot dog, ham, bacon, guacamole, and cheese. Oh my! It was fantastic. The spice of the chiles with the creamy guacamole made for a burger which was so delicious. Coupled with the "frings" (onion rings and fries) I could only finish half of it. That may also be due in part to the fact that we had enough food on our table to feed a small country in Europe for at least a week.

We also got an appetizer with zucchini, squash, corn, and cheese called calabasitas. Somewhat spicy, but very tasty. I've included a picture of all of the food on our table. The picture doesn't really show just how much is there!

We decided on this little dive because we had seen Adam from Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel taking their "7 lb. breakfast burrito challenge". After our experience here, its not hard to see why he didn't finish it. In Adam's defense, that burrito does have a dozen eggs in it.

As we sat waiting on our food (it took a while because they cook everything fresh), we talked about ideas for the "someday" version of Red Dirt BBQ and the kids tried to come up with ideas for a challenge which would attract Adam to our imaginary establishment. These are the best times of my life; just sitting with my favorite people enjoying their company and light conversation.

After a great meal, we did the usual "pick a street and drive". We drove west on Hwy. 40 (Colfax Blvd.) until we were nearly in Golden, CO (home of the Coors brewery). It was insightful to see the many faces of Denver. We passed through parts of town in which most people would double check that their doors were locked. A mile later, the Colorado Mills mall pops into view and the buildings get decidedly newer.

Just past the intersection of I-70, we turned around and headed back to the hotel. At this point in the trip, I must mention the things for which I am thankful:

• a great wife who likes to go new places
• two fantastic kids who are truly a joy with which to travel
• a very dependable vehicle (we'll turn 100,000 miles before we get home) with great air conditioning and only one rattle
• a job which allows me to travel to conferences such as ISTE

We are off on Thursday morning to Estes Park for part of the day and then down to Colorado Springs for Royal Gorge and the Garden of the Gods for the rest of our trip. (Oh and before I forget, Michelle and the kids went to the Eclipse premiere on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning.)