The Sergeant and I went for a little jaunt down to the foothills west and south of Pueblo this last week. This wood-planked bridge was our chief destination.
Pretty, isn't it? It's even more impressive when you look through a knothole in the wood.
The ground seems pretty far away.
Yes, that's the Arkansas River, 955 feet down, with train tracks running alongside.
The Royal Gorge suspension bridge was built in 1929 as a tourist attraction. It's been restrung with fresh cables since then, happily.
| (If you have a pair of red-blue 3D glasses, click on this 3D photo of the cables that the Sergeant took with his homemade 3D camera. It's pretty cool!) |  |
There's an incline railway (built in 1931) that you can take to the bottom of the gorge to see the bridge from below. Not that you can really see much, that far away!
The Sergeant and I are not fond of crowds, so late in the day on a September weekday was a good time to go. We got on the incline railway without much of a wait, for example.
 | I think it's unfortunate that they do allow cars to cross the bridge. What can you see from the car? Not much. But on foot, you can examine the bridge up close ... once the friggin' cars have passed. (That's the Sergeant's picture of me, shooting through the knothole.) |
Visiting the Royal Gorge bridge is not cheap, at $25 a person, but there's a bunch of rides included, like the incline railway and the aerial tram. If you stop at the visitor center in Cañon City first, they have discount coupons. I was lucky and bought a 2-for-1 Groupon back in May.
If you happen to be passing through Colorado on U.S. 50 (or visiting kin at the nearby Supermax federal prison – the Unabomber's there, for example), be sure to swing by!
Impressive! Unabomber, huh? I have to confess to a morbid fascination with this particular terrorist. I remember reading his Manifesto when it was published by the Times and the Wash. Post and thinking "this is one weirdly brilliant character." Plus the highly sustainable lifestyle in that cabin in the Montana mountains was intriguing. AND the difficult decision by the press on whether or not to publish his treatise, but the ultimate wisdom in doing so b/c it did what the FBI hoped it would do: lead someone to ID him. AND the poor brother who had to make the terrible decision to turn in his own brother.... can't make this stuff up.
ReplyDeleteTruth is stranger than fiction, eh? It's so sad when brilliant minds go astray like that. It's such a waste and a tragedy for everyone involved.
ReplyDelete