We spent a few days in Cañon City, CO. It is one of the warmer winter cities in Colorado due to its modest elevation (5,200') and the position of the mountains. Winter lows are modest, as is snowfall. Summers have warm to hot days, but cool nights.
We arrived in the early afternoon on Thursday, June 30th, and it was a warm day of just over 90ºF. We headed to the Garden Park area, where a couple of the early dinosaur quarries were located. In the 1870's they discovered dozens of specimens including Apatosaurus (Brontosaurus), Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and Allosaurus. Most of the finds were Jurassic era (150 million years ago). These were some of the first and most complete finds in the world, and many are housed in major museums, including the Smithsonian.
 |
One of the high producing quarries was right above the horizontal rock layer
|
With rain clouds building around us, the air cooled a bit, and we visited the Tunnel Trail. This trail is an old road, which started as a water project around 1900, and runs for 2 miles along the Arkansas River. There are three tunnels blasted into 1.7 million-year-old rock.
 |
Tunnel Trail along the Arkansas River
|
On Friday, we did a rail and raft day. In the morning, we rode the train into the Royal Gorge. It was a beautiful morning, and we enjoyed the gorge and watching the rafts come through the canyon. In the afternoon, it was our turn to be on the rafts. We rafted a bit upstream in Bighorn Canyon. Some storms dropped a little rain on us, so we got wet from above and below. That evening we camped at a lovely city campground near the rim of the gorge.
 |
Royal Gorge railroad and bridge
|
The next morning, we hiked to the Royal Gorge canyon rim overlook. Then we drove back toward town and drove along Skyline Drive. This narrow road, with no guardrails, offers some great views of the area. The neatest feature is some reverse dinosaur footprints. The layer below the prints eroded, leaving the view of the underside of some Ankylosarus footprints as they walked past around 68 million years ago.
 |
Dino tracks, Bebop gazing out, and the narrow road with no rails
|
After Skyline Drive we walked the full Tunnel Trail again, then stopped at the Geologic Time Map adjacent to the local community college. At both places, Bebop wore herself out chasing lizards she spotted along the trails. Elena said she sure wished she was rafting again, so I booked another raft trip for Sunday near Salida in Browns Canyon on the Arkansas River - quite a bit upstream from our trip on Friday.
Bebop says don't forget to take the time to smell the flowers.
- Paul
0 comments:
Post a Comment