Gorging on Vacation

Monday was technically the *REAL* first day of my sabbatical. I would say it was strange not going to work, but it wasn’t. The phantom vibrations from my phone have almost subsided, and I am successfully detoxing from email. I still pull out my phone out of reflex and start putting in my passcode before I realize I have NOTHING TO DO ON MY PHONE.  I find the nearest bird or flower and take a picture so that I don’t look foolish. 

We woke up at 6am to get everyone ready to head down to the Royal Gorge Railroad. This has been the most beautiful part of our trip so far. The Royal Gorge, also called the Grand Canyon of Arkansas, is a canyon on the Arkansas River near Cañon City, Colorado. With a width of 50 feet at its base and a few hundred feet at its top, and a depth of 1,250 feet in places, the 10-mile-long canyon is a narrow, steep gorge through the granite of Fremont Peak. It is one of the deepest canyons in Colorado. Ok, so maybe my memory isn’t *THAT* great and maybe I got that from Wikipedia.

Anyway, there is some great history with the railroad and the Royal Gorge. In the late 1800s, there were two main railroad companies that were competing to put tracks in the Royal Gorge, which was so narrow in some points that it could only fit one set of tracks. The railroad companies actually hired gunmen to fight it out and win control of the Gorge. And our parents tell us that our generation is violent. Sheesh!  Eventually, lawyers got involved, as they are wont to do, and all the fun gun fighting and sabotaging ended with the Denver and Rio Grande in control of the Royal Gorge.

Haley, Emily, Connor (who doesn't smile in pictures...teenage boys are too cool for that), Kristin, Kayla, Ashley, and Sherri

Ashley (and her Train Conductor rubber ducky), Haley, and Emily. Good thing I'm not a sucker for souvenirs. 

This would be a great picture if someone's fat head wasn't in the way.

Very cool suspension bridge

Old dude panning for gold. I couldn't tell if this guy was real or if they put him here for ambiance. He sure looked real.

As you can see, the train ride was absolutely gorge-eous. And, I limited myself to 27 gorge jokes during the ride. The ride is set up to where you go out in the gorge about an hour, stop for a bit, and come back the same way.  After the halfway point, the girls disappeared from the open car and went back to our seats. I went to find them and they were playing on their phones.  I told them that they were missing all of nature’s beauty. They informed me that since we went out the same way, that they had already seen all of it. It was kind of hard to argue that.

When we got back to the train station, we found a nearby park to hang out in and eat the picnic lunch we had packed.

The girls found some geese that had obviously been fed by humans a few times.

That evening, Sherri’s cousins, Eric and Chris, Eric’s wife Amy, Chris’s wife Tia, and Chris & Tia’s kids Peyton and Brayden joined us for a barbeque (I don't know why they call this stuff Hamburger Helper....it does just fine by itself, huh?).  It was great to see them and to meet Tia for the first time. We also got to meet Zeus, Eric and Amy’s dog. That dog has more energy than the kids who were tearing around the house. We are really happy that we have been able to see so many of our friends and family on this trip.

Kayla, Emily, Haley, Ashley, Sherri, Eric (with Zeus!), me, Tia, Peyton, Brayden, Chris, Kristin, Connor (with Casey), Noah, Steven, Amy

Zeus!