After a long week or so crossing the plains, I finally caught sight of a shadow on the horizon: Pikes Peak. This was tremendously exciting. Before I reached the Plains, I was dying for some flat country. By the time I was a couple days into the flat country, I was dying for some hills. Flat is all very well, but when there’s no up, there’s no down. And down, as you might imagine, is awesome.
Our second day in the Rockies, Audrey and I slogged our way up an 8-mile-long hill to reach a campsite at the Royal Gorge in central Colorado. As it happened, the campsite was just across the street from a bar and grill that turned out to be a hangout for the local whitewater rafting crowd. A couple beers into the night, Audrey and I not only were having a great time, but had talked someone into sneaking us on to a whitewater rafting trip for free the next day. As it was already far past our bedtime, taking a day off to whitewater raft seemed like a fantastic idea.
The next morning, after sleeping in until a luxurious 8am or so, we had a lazy breakfast, and floated over to the rafting company. Everything worked like clockwork: for $5 each we got ourselves onto the afternoon raft trip down the Royal Gorge. The trip was incredibly fun, and a good little workout for those abdominal muscles that have been almost entirely neglected otherwise. Afterwards we were immediately exhausted, and took an hour-long nap in the laundry room almost accidentally.
I’ll be honest: we barely made it out of Royal Gorge. Despite our best intentions on our second night there, we drank a couple more beers than was sensible, and stayed up a little too late once again. The place had a volleyball court and a guy playing endless cover tunes in the back yard. It had been a long time since we saw so many under-30s in one place — small-town America, sadly, tends toward the older demographic. The next morning we didn’t wake up until 9, and weren’t on the road until 11.
We did make it onto the road though, and that’s what mattered. Royal Gorge was starting to seem dangerously addictive, and even with free raft trips, the expenses were mounting (although somehow I did manage to drink for an entire evening and end up with a $6 tab — I think the locals got a real kick out of the bicycling idea.)
Posted by: sam