In December 2018, we spent Christmas with our family at our daughter’s house in Aurora, Colorado. In addition to visiting with family, we visited several local tourist attractions, including the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, Seven Falls, Garden of the Gods, and the town of Manitou Springs.
The first place we visited was Royal Gorge. My wife visited it with her family many years ago and, during a recent health emergency, promised her brother that “next Christmas, we’ll walk across the Royal Gorge Bridge.”
The Royal Gorge lies about two hours south of suburban Denver. It is a relatively easy drive down Interstate 25 to get there. In 1929, Canon City authorized the building of the bridge 955 feet above the Arkansas River. The bridge was built to serve as a tourist attraction and held the world’s highest bridge title from 1929 – 2001. Though literature describes it as an amusement park, I would say it is more of a bridge with a few attractions, not what one would typically consider an amusement park. The attractions include a kiddie ride, theater, visitor center, aerial tram, and zip line. There may be a couple of others that are closed in the winter. After a long and very cold day, we headed home, stopping for dinner at a local eatery.
A few days later, we embarked on our next journey, visiting the Manitou Cliff Dwellings and the town of Manitou Springs.
Originally located in McElmo Canyon, in the southwest corner of Colorado, the cliff dwellings were relocated to their current location between 1904 and 1907. The dwellings were loaded and shipped by railroad to Colorado Springs and brought to Cliff Canyon by horse and wagon. They were then reassembled using mortar instead of the adobe mud and clay used by the Anasazi tribe. This allows people to walk inside and tour the dwellings instead of other dwellings that you can just look at. It was a very interesting and worthwhile visit. Afterward, we headed to Manitou Springs for shopping, an old-time photo, and dinner.
A day or two later, we began our final tourist adventure, a trip to the Garden of the Gods and Seven Falls waterfalls. Garden of the Gods is located minutes from Manitou Springs near Colorado Springs. It consists of rock formations left behind by the erosion and glaciation of ancient rocks. Some of the formations include “Balanced Rock,” “North Gateway”, “South Gateway”, “Gray Rock”, and “Sleeping Giant.” Hiking and climbing are permitted throughout the park. After a brief visit, we traveled through by car due to the cold weather, we continued on our journey to Seven Falls, about a 25 minute drive away.
Known as “The Grandest Mile of Scenery in Colorado”, Seven Falls waterfall rises to over 900 feet above the canyon floor, narrowing to just 41 feet across. It is the only waterfall on National Geographic’s list of International Waterfalls. There are two options for viewing the falls, one is to take the elevator to a viewing platform which provided an excellent view of the falls. The option is to climb the 224 steps to the top. We chose both, however, since it was very cold…brrr…we climbed approximately halfway to the lower viewing platform. This also provided an excellent view of the falls, which were frozen, but you could see water running underneath the ice. If you plan on dining in the restaurant at the base of the falls, make reservations in advance as they are often full, even in mid-winter. This concluded the tourist portion of our trip.
