Sometime back in the 1990's as best we can recall, Mary and I flew up on a long weekend and visited this area. It was on that same weekend we visited the Academy.
Royal Gorge bridge was built as a tourist attraction years ago. On our visit back in the 90's we walked across the bridge and played tourist. When we arrived today we were a bit surprised to see the pricing, $27 per person! No thank you. Took a couple of free pictures instead.
We were fortunate in that apparently a vintage Porsche club was there. Several nice cars in the lot.
Part of our memories of that trip was a journey up phantom canyon road. A narrow, twisty, gravel road between Canon city and Victor. We learned today it was the route of a narrow gauge railroad to haul gold ore. Mary wanted to conquer her demons so we drove it again.
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| these signs did not exist on our first trip up the canyon |
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| I told you narrow, remember two way traffic |
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| classifies as a blind corner |
The drive took us up to the Victor/Cripple creek area. These are two old mining towns from the 1890's. They have resumed mining gold around Victor but doing it via open pit, not hard rock shafts as before. Back in 1991 Colorado passed legislation to allow limited gambling in Cripple Creek Blackhawk and Central City.( Blackhawk and Central City are up north of I70 west of Denver). At any rate this created a boom for the area that did not last. Cripple Creek was mostly closed up small casinos much like we found in Deadwood. Since our last visit they have build a very nice heritage center.
It was a very nice drive in the high country. Tomorrow is our last full day here and we plan to visit the Olympic training facilities. The neighborhood back home is flooded due to heavy rains. More forecasted and possible tropical storm coming. Not worried about the house but all of these things may affect our timeline.
carpe diem
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