Wednesday August 4, 2010-Garden of the Gods Campground

Here is Cameron and Tyler standing in front of one of the old trains on display at the train ride through the Royal Gorge. You can't tell it from this picture, but I think they're pretty excited about it.

Here you see Mike, Patrice, Ryan with his head turned, Tyler and Cameron sitting at a table while we wait to board the train.

Here you can see how sheer the cliff walls are down to the river. Up high in the photo is the Royal Gorge bridge over the canyon. The gorge is approximately 50 feet wide at the bottom and a few hundred feet wide at the top. The gorge is approximately 1250 feet deep. I believe that it is still illegal to fish from the bridge...

There is a helicopter that takes patrons for a ride over the gorge and frequently buzzes down into the gorge. It looks like a very exciting ride but we didn't have time to take the flight.

You can see how rough and muddy the water was today. The recent rains have stirred up a lot of dirt in the river.

Its kind of difficult to see, but if you look closely, you can see the remnants of the old water line into Canon City. I'm not certain when the line was put in but it was used up until the 1970's.

Here is a group of rafters that are jumping into a deep spot in the river. They climb up on the rocks and jump into the river.

Here are some rafters floating down the river. Mike and Patrice agreed to take all three boys on this float this afternoon. We all went to eat at the White Water Bar and Grill before they had to change and get ready for the raft float. The food was terrible and I can't recommend it to anyone. The meat was tasteless and even though they furnished condiments, the whole sandwich was dry and hard to eat.

Stella and I drove back to Colorado Springs and rested for the afternoon. We started out to come back through Victor, which is a sister city to Cripple Creek but doesn't have the gambling and is reportedly almost a ghost town, but the road we started out on turned into a gravel road and we decided not to go that way. We came on back on a back road instead of the freeway we had gone up on and found it a prettier drive but longer in time.

Stella fixed some of her goulash for supper for everyone and we sat around visiting, listening to the rain. It has rained every night since we've been here, but it cools things off and makes it nice. It was 59 degrees this morning, so its a welcome change from the Houston area. We're going to enjoy it as long as we can.

So long.