Who in their right mind stands at one side of a ¼ mile span that is 1000 feet deep and thinks, “There should be a suspension bridge across this.” Some crazy dude did exactly this outside of Cañon City, Colorado.
We spent the day visiting the greater Cañon City area including Royal Gorge on Wednesday. On our way to the gorge we stopped at the local historical society and learned about the town and its most famous citizen Dallas “Dall” (insert last name here). He was a successful businessman, entrepreneur, world traveler, and big game hunter. Many of his kills were on display in the former city municipal building that served as the museum. Other item in the collection were some fantastic old music players, including one of the first jukeboxes that played a selection of 16 songs each on their own cylinder. Being a rather large group, we were lucky enough to have our own personal guide for much of tour – maybe she didn’t trust us alone.
Back to the bridge. Leaving town on the way to the bridge, I couldn’t help but draw similarities between Cañon City and Wisconsin Dells. Take a natural (the dells) or a man-made (bridge) attraction, build up an entire city around it, and commercialize the hell out of it. I’m sure I’m over-simplifying it, but it felt like I was driving through downtown Lake Delton.
We arrived and bridge and were smacked hard in the face with the $24 per adult entry fee to the attraction. Really?!? One hundred dollars per family to see this thing? The bridge itself was obscured perfectly from the parking lot so you couldn’t cheat and just look through the fence. To be fair, there were mini-attractions on both sides of the bridge that were included in your “passport.” I guess “passport” sounds better than “ticket.” Come to think of it, the passport was just your cash register receipt. We didn’t even get a commemorative ticket stub. Due primarily to the high cost, almost all of our clan decided to skip the bridge and do some exploring around the area. Knowing full well that I wasn’t going all the way across, Clare and I were the only ones to venture through the gates.
Our goal was to get in and out in under an hour which earned us a $7 rebate on our ticket price. I guess they wanted you to stay and shop and eat for the better part of the day. We took our requisite 100+ pictures that will in no way capture the magnificent beauty of the site, the bridge, the gorge, the rafters in the waters below, and the crazy people in the tram gliding over the span. The first part of the bridge is over rock that is only a hundred feet or so down. I was OK walking out over that part. Barely. Clare was much more brave than I and wandered out well past the shorter part to peer over the edge at the river below. Thank you to camera manufacturers who developed zoom lenses so I didn’t have to follow her out so far. We hit the lookout points nearer to the beginning of the bridge and then decided to take a ride to the bottom of the gorge on the near-vertical train (one of the attractions included with our “passports”). You get to stand in a cage during the descent, so most of the pictures and video have red or blue iron mesh running through the frame. We didn’t spend much time at the bottom, but did get a sense for the how high (and tiny) the bridge is by looking up. A quick ride back to the top and we had seen pretty much everything we came to see. Time check. Fifty-six minutes. Perfect.