We rode The Royal Gorge Route Railroad on Friday. Ticket sales are at the back of one gift shop. You’re kind of forced to look at all lot of merchandise. Then you get outside where you can see the train, but wait! You’re not really there yet, you have to go through another gift shop.

 

As the train pulled out of the station, we rode by the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility. It was built in 1871 as a territorial prison and became a state prison in 1876. It was built by convicts using stone quarried and cut on-site. Prisoners also built a water pipeline system that carried river water for 11 miles through redwood pipes that filtered the alkaline, into a settling pond where sediment dropped to the bottom, and into smothered pipeline that carried water to the city. Quarried stone and adobe bricks were used to hold the pipe in place when the slope was too steep.

 

Our train meandered through the Royal Gorge alongside the Arkansas River. We saw many rafters, some of which we actually had a conversation with as we traveled side by side. We learned the difference between a canyon and a gorge—the walls of a gorge slope so they are further apart at the top than the bottom. We could really see that.

 

Along the Arkansas River, our train passed an interesting campground where you can rent a yurt or an Airstream trailer.

 

We went under the Royal Gorge Bridge, which “crosses the gorge 955 feet above the Arkansas River and held the record of highest bridge in the world from 1929 until 2001 when it was surpassed by the Liuguanghe Bridge in China. It maintained the title of the world's highest suspension bridge until the Beipan River Guanxing Highway Bridge was completed in 2003, also in China.“

 

We had assigned seats in beautiful old train cars but ended up spending most of our time in the open car at the back. There was a fabulous employee, Ana, that filled us in on what we were seeing and the history of the area. Here she is taking a picture of another group. She took our picture, too. Even from the back in a still photo, you can see her energy.

 

In the background you can see the “hanging bridge.” “It is at a point where the gorge narrows to 30 feet. Here the railroad had to be suspended over the river along the north side of the gorge as shear rock walls go right down into the river on both sides.”

 

“C. Shallor Smith, a Kansas engineer, designed a 175-ft plate girder suspended on one side by “A” frame girders spanning the river and anchored to the rock walls. The bridge cost $11,759 in 1879, a princely sum in those days. Although it has been strengthened over the years, this unique structure has served on a main rail line for over 118 years.”

 

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! Well, it’s really the gondola ride over the Royal Gorge and some turkey vultures. (I didn’t get a pic of the zip line folks, but they’re up there, too.) The vultures look like tiny black dots but in reality, they are almost as high in the sky as the gondolas, so imagine how big they must be for us to see them from the ground.

 

 

Friday night we ate dinner at Harding on Main that just opened in March of this year. “The restaurant’s name is from the historic 1800s Harding Building, which has its roots in the Harding family of Cañon City, who were well-known for the Harding Hardware Co.” The fare was American meets global.