Royal Gorge

We had to leave Ouray this morning :( We headed east via highway 50. We crossed the Continental Divide at Monarch Pass (elevation 11,000+) - it was cold and windy! Good preparation for 14,000 feet tomorrow (Pikes Peak).
The road followed the Arkansas River for a lot of the ride. We pulled off at one point and watched rafters go down the river - good thing we saw that AFTER we'd already done our rafting. We saw bighorn sheep on the side of the road!

We took a short detour to see the Royal Gorge - the highest suspension bridge in the US, over 1000 feet above the same Arkansas River we'd been driving alongside earlier. We drove across the bridge and then walked back to explore. We could feel the bridge swaying with the wind and in the middle of the bridge it was very windy (you can see my hair blowing around in the photo below). While we were on the bridge we saw a train go by on the tracks at the bottom of the gorge - it looked like a toy! We rode an inclined rail down to the bottom of the gorge and watched the Arkansas River rushing past, swirling and crashing over rocks and along the cliff walls. Looking up at the bridge gave you a sense of how high we'd been only a few minutes before.

Tonight we're spending the night in Manitou Springs, near the base of Pikes Peak. tomorrow we'll ride the Cog Railway to the top (over 14,000 feet).

Kevin's nose is our new altimeter, the higher we go the more congested he gets, and the mountain pollen blowing in the air is making his allergies go nuts!