After a restful night, I doubled back up north to Pueblo and then cut west, away from the highway. Low, brownish mountains ringed the landscape. Scrubby bushes and piñon pines respected each other’s distance, sprouting up every 10 feet or so between the road and the distant mountains. A few ranch-style homes were tucked in among scraggly windswept trees. Two horses stood near the road, one intently watching the passing cars and the other with its back to the road, clearly uninterested. The outskirts of Cañon City belied its true character. After passing the hideously institutional East Cañon Correctional Complex as well as weatherworn billboards advertising “custom meat processing,” I found myself in the city’s quaint downtown. Trendy cafes, restaurants, boutiques, and dinosaur statues lined the historic Main Street. Almost all of the Main Street businesses seemed locally owned. While Cañon City had its share of chains, they were relegated to less scenic parts of town.
Downtown Cañon City, CO
I popped into a cafe for a cup of coffee and slice of iced lemon poppy seed pound cake. On the back patio, I eavesdropped on two retired ranchers, both probably in their 70s and both wearing Stetsons and cowboy boots. They were debating the finer points of international responses to coronavirus in Australia and the Middle East and lamenting the US’s lack of a serious response strategy. They swapped stories about jobs they’d worked over the decades before settling on ranching. They knew someone whose ranch was supposedly pulling in $100,000 per year. The owner was looking to sell. Maybe it could be a good investment.
In a residential part of town, I drove past a larger-than-life statue of Bigfoot in someone’s front yard. Bigfoot was holding a Black Lives Matter sign and wearing a mask. Nearby, the local fire department had a T-Rex statue out front. The dinosaur was dressed in a firefighting suit and, like Bigfoot, wearing a mask. I drove out to Red Canyon Park, about a half hour north of the city. Cell service vanished.
The route took me down a dirt road off the paved county road. From the parking area in the park, there was no real trail to follow. Instead, hikers plunged into a dusty red wash that was flanked on either side by impressive red rock formation worn smooth over the millennia. Just before I entered the dry creek bed, a group of three women came out, preceded by no fewer than five dogs. They departed in the only other two cars that had been in the gravel lot, and I knew I was alone. I walked about a mile into the wash and a mile back out, marveling at the power of the now-absent water that had carved it out. A yellow butterfly swooped in surprisingly close to me and, in the silence of the wash, I heard the whoosh of a few fragile wingbeats before it fluttered off.
Red rock walls line a dried river bed in the aptly named Red Canyon Park
Back in Cañon City, I took advantage of the cell phone service to catch up with my parents. Leaving town to the west, I joined a convoy of RVs and vans headed for Royal Gorge. From the Canyon Rim Trailhead, I hiked several miles around the canyon’s rim, each successive viewpoint offering a more stunning view of the Arkansas River and the canyon home it has created for itself. Rafters on the river appeared as brightly colored specks. Although it was a generally sunny day, a cloud on the far side of the canyon was dumping some much-needed rain on the red soil. When the cloud arrived on my side of the canyon, it had reduced to a gentle, refreshing sun shower.
With several hours of daylight still remaining, I headed back into town and to the Tunnel Drive Trail. Following the paved, flat, and relatively easy trail that traced a former railroad bed, I passed through a series of dynamite-blasted tunnels in the cliffside. The first few were short, more arches than tunnels. The last one, while not excessively long, extended far enough that sunlight just barely reached the center portion.
The trail hugged the side of the cliff, maybe 100 feet above the river below. The modern train tracks were situated at the bottom of the gorge, right next to the river. The trail, train tracks, and river snaked further into the gorge, away from Cañon City. When I saw the tourist train round a bend and come into view, I stepped to the side of the trail to get ready to snap a picture as it approached. Unfortunately, I stepped right next to an ant nest teeming with industrious littler critters. They swarmed up my sneakers and onto my ankles before I noticed and shook them off. For the next half hour, however, my mind kept convincing me that they were still there.
When I got back into town, it had started to rain again. This time, it was more than just a sun shower. I drove back towards Red Canyon Park to spend the night in one of the free campsites that lined the dirt road. Before reaching the park, I passed a field where a herd of 40 wild mule deer were grazing like domestic horses.
I had hoped to catch a spectacular sunset over the red rock spires that jutted up from Red Rock Park, but the thick cloud cover meant the day was simply going to fade to a dismal gray before total darkness. I found a camping spot as good as any, angled my car on the sloped and pockmarked dirt surface to try to make my bed level, and listened to the raindrops dancing on the metal roof.
Rock spires loom above Red Canyon Park
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