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| Dave is first in line! |
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| look at the size of this old Cottonwood tree! |
It was a beautiful day, sunny and just warm enough. We booked seats in the dome view car so we could get the best look at the Arkansas River and its high canyon walls as we moved along. I love seeing great heights from below.....
Evidently this is Halloween weekend (who knew that was a thing.....) so our train was decorated for the holiday as were the workers.....
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| our conductor |
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| a colorful unicorn? |
We enjoyed a glass of wine and a very delicious lunch as we slowly moved through the wonderful scenery.
My only complaint was that, because of the Halloween "schtick" they really didn't bother to tell us about what we were seeing....for instance the wooden water pipe/conduit that ran alongside the river and through many hand dug tunnels. We finally snagged someone passing by and were told that it was the source of municipal water for Canon City for many years, he thought perhaps until 1974 but he didn't really know for sure.....hmmmm. It would have been interesting to know more about it. Ah well, Halloween comes first.
Unfortunately my pictures didn't turn very well because of the reflections in the large windows. I decided to put the camera down and enjoy the scenery and experience. You'll have to take my word for how majestic and impressive our views were.
We traveled under the Royal Gorge Bridge, 1000 feet above the river. It looked like a piece of string over our heads.
We were on the train for a total of 2 hours. The seats were very comfortable, the food was excellent and the scenery was stupendous. Bottom line though is I felt more like I was on a moving restaurant than a scenic excursion. I had many questions about what we were seeing - we wondered about the history of the route, the bridge, the building, use and maintenance of the interesting water pipe and its various buildings and abutments, the geology of the gorge, etc. And....it was not an inexpensive trip.
The Gorge is beautiful and seeing it from below would be awesome. You are right about the bridge looking like a string. I think it would be harder to drive over it after seeing it from below. Make me shiver! Sorry to hear they didn't give information about the journey. Halloween or not, I would think most passengers want to know what is going by outside and the history of the gorge. But it did look like a lovely, relaxing trip:)
ReplyDeleteI had no idea there was a train down there!! Not sure I went out on the bridge when the boys and I were there years ago - I remember the carousel and feeding the mule deer on the road in and out :-) Love Halloween, but not at the expense of a good tour, and not blocking part of the view. It looks like a beautiful trip otherwise.
ReplyDeleteWell, you would think they could have given you a good tour, even if they were in costume! I'm glad you at least enjoyed a tasty lunch in the moving restaurant. And I know how difficult it is to take photos through glass with reflections, but those are cool photos of the train curving through the gorge.
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