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.