Colorado: Part 2

On Monday morning, we headed towards Salida with a stop in Cañon City. Tyler had never been to the Royal Gorge, so I knew he needed to see it. We decided to take the train through it, though. This would be an adventure for both of us.

C A Ñ O N  C I T Y

Henry loves trains right now, and he says, “Shoo, shoo,” so of course I took a few pics to send to my mom to show him. It was a beautiful morning for a train ride. The train depot is several miles from the Royal Gorge bridge and activity area. We rode west along the Arkansas River and into the gorge.

We splurged a little extra on the “Vista Dome” car and I’m so glad we did! The windows allowed us to see so much more, and we were on the upper level of the train.

The train also had a couple of open cars so you could go outside. We opted for that when we got to the bridge.

As we were headed back towards the train depot, we passed lots of rafters. I thought it looked like so much fun! Our server said that this stretch of the river had a class 5 rapids, and you had to be at least 18 years old to raft this part of the river.

Once we got back, we went to lunch. We were trying to decide whether or not to spend the money to go across the bridge. We decided to look on our All Trails app to see what kind of hiking we could do in the area. It was very hot that day—95° or something, but we found a trail and decided to try it. I’m so glad we did! The views were absolutely stunning (and free)!

If you look closely, you can see the lunch train to the left of the river.

The hike was worth saving the extra money. If you’ve never been over the bridge, I say go. But Tyler doesn’t like heights all that much, and he didn’t feel like he was missing out. If you’ve done the bridge and gondola, then go for the hike (or do both)!

S A L I D A

After our hike, we drove on into Salida, which was about an hour away. We got checked into our hotel early, and then headed into their “downtown” area. We ate supper at the cutest little pizza joint. They had the best gluten free crust I’ve ever had!

The next day, we rented an off-road jeep. This was something Tyler wanted to do, and to be quite honest, I wasn’t excited about it. BUT this was our trip and I was up for the adventure.

They gave us an atlas, showed us some places we could go, and let us go off on an adventure.

Most of our travels were on gravel road. I thought to myself, “This isn’t that bad.” But we hadn’t gotten to the crazy part of the road yet. Ha! It ended up taking us 2 hours to go 7 miles. It was dusty and bumpy and hilarious. And we had a great time!

On the way up Marshall Pass.

O’Haver Lake

On the other side of the pass, and on the way back to Salida, we stopped in the tiny town of Sargents at the only restaurant in town. I had the best salad and we completed our meal with their homemade ice cream.

If you’re ever in Sargents, stop by! You won’t be disappointed.

We did stop at a waterfall on the way back to Salida. It was gorgeous. Once we returned to Salida, we headed over to Crested Butte. But more on that in the next post.

10 Year Anniversary Trip: Colorado

We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on July 30th. How in the world have we already been married that long? It seems like just yesterday we had our wedding. Then we blinked and here we are.

When we started planning our 10 year anniversary, we were gonna go big. We had planned an Alaskan cruise in the summer so we could see the glaciers on a balcony room. But alas, COVID19 hit, and cruises were suspended. And while they are somewhat back in business, it was too late, and we weren’t qualified to go anyway. So we started looking for something else. The US offers so many options when it comes to travel, and one thing on my bucket list is to go to Glacier National Park. So we started planning that trip, but there were NO places to stay during our dates. We really couldn’t believe it. Plans kept falling through, and we finally just decided to go to Colorado. We love Colorado. We’ve been there many, many times. But this time we decided to do things we’ve never done before.

We once again planned the trip solely on credit card points—we’d been saving them ever since our Europe trip. We booked our flights, and a week before we were to leave, we got Covid. Womp, womp. The trip was postponed. But we got flight credit, and instead of having to fly out of Tulsa, we could fly out of our local airport for even cheaper. Yay!

Traveling while leaving the kid at home was different for us. It was like packing for 3 people instead of just 2, but we did it. This is the first trip that we’ve ever left him for that long. I was a little nervous to leave him, but I fully trusted both sets of grandparents to rock the babysitting gig. I’m so grateful that we didn’t have to worry about them.

Tyler had never been to Colorado in the summer (other than when he traveled to the Denver office for work—and that does not even count). So we decided to make a road trip of it (after we flew to Denver).

Flying was exactly the same with the exception of now having to wear a mask. But all other regulations were just that. We flew out of our little local airport and directly into Denver.

C O L O R A D O  S P R I N G S

The view outside the front door of our hotel on Sunday morning.

We drove down to Colorado Springs from Denver, after stopping for a very late lunch. We checked into our hotel since we stayed up by the Air Force base. Then we decided to head down to Garden of the Gods. I was surprised at how hot it was in Denver and Colorado Springs. I was hoping for cooler weather, but at least we didn’t have much humidity.

On Sunday morning, we got up and headed to Pike’s Peak. I’ve been up Pike’s Peak several times, but every time, my dad or someone else was driving. I didn’t really want that stress on us, as I knew that we would be driving a lot later. So we decided to take the newly revamped Cog Railway up.

For reference, Colorado Springs sits at approximately 6,000 feet above sea level, and Pike’s Peak is over 14,000 feet. It was a climb. It took about an hour to get up to the top, and we had 40 minutes to look around. They just built a brand new visitors center up there, which was nice! It was rather chilly, and I’m glad Tyler and I packed our “Switzerland coats” for this excursion.

The trip down was a little longer than the ride up, and gratefully so. I did not want to be rolling down the tracks at a high speed. Haha. At this point in the trip, the ascent to that elevation really affected me. My head was pounding, and while I had already consumed over 60 oz of water by 10 am, it did absolutely nothing for me. My head hurt so bad that I thought I was going to throw up. I couldn’t really even tell Tyler what I wanted for lunch. I just wanted to go lay in bed.

He was gracious about it, and I did just that for the rest of the day. I felt better after a little nap, but my head was still pounding. I will say, this was the only headache I had on the entire trip, but it was sure a doozy.

Monday, I got up feeling a lot better and we headed onto Cañon City. But I’ll share more about that in the next blog entry.