Royal Gorge/Cañon City KOA, Cañon City Friday, 11 September 2020
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today's route
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[Note: The folks who run this blog have switched to a "new interface." They have condescendingly allowed me to use the "legacy interface" up until today, but they now refuse to offer that option. This new version is functioning much like when Microsoft offers new versions of their software, and everybody hates them because they're hard to work with and have bugs or something. That's what this new blog system is like - very hard for me to figure out how to make it work and refusing to do things the "legacy" version did routinely. Meanwhile, I'm just trying my best to catch up on my posts while I still have an internet signal available. Grrr!]
Since daylight, I could see we had fog so heavy that I could barely see the cars on US 50 a half block from my campsite. I also knew there would be a long detour on my drive to Pueblo because of construction on US 50, and even the official routing would take me on much smaller side roads. Seemed like a bad combination to me, but I wanted to get on the road early. I planned to stop in Pueblo to get new tires for my front axle, pick up some groceries, go to a liquor store, find the recycle place, and drive around town a bit to get a feel for it. And after all that I still had more than an hour's drive ahead to get to the Royal Gorge. So off I went.
On the road Colorado has a town named Swink (pop. 596). Just past the town I saw a highway sign reminding folks there's a statewide burn ban on, doubtless because of the drought status.
Rocky Ford (pop. about 3,900) claims to be the Sweet Melon Capital (of the state? of the US? of the world?). Because US 50 runs through downtown, I can report they have a store named Don's For Lad & Dad Shoes. I haven't heard a phrase like "lad and dad" in 50 years.
I heard on the radio that this past August was the hottest August on record for Colorado. They came up with that by combining the high and low temperatures statewide and getting their average, and the answer of 70° as the statewide average is, they said, by far the highest since they began keeping records.
At Rocky Ford I turned onto state and county roads for the detour and drove through a lot of farmland: hay and corn and cows and goats - I saw a goat feed lot - and fruit (including a PIC UR OWN apple orchard) and a pair of llamas. Also 2 separate prisons which seems excessive on a road that wasn't more than about 15 miles long.
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view of crepuscular rays
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Also on the radio, I heard this week's commentary called Peak Perspectives that Colorado Public Radio has. I'm posting the link here - about "crepuscular rays" - because I want to remember it, and you may want to read it too.
https://www.cpr.org/chasing-the-light This illustrating photo I found online.
I passed a very large cropfield with very large signs saying: "Industrial Hemp" and "No Trespassing" and "24 Hour Security" with a little picture of a surveillance camera. Recreational marijuana is legal in Colorado statewide, except it's not legal in a local jurisdiction until the local government has approved it.
What's also legal are chiles, and Pueblo chiles are apparently well known among chile aficionados. They're in the news lately because the chiles are still on the plants and the snow was causing much worry about whether they'd be allowed to finish growing. Pueblo holds an annual chile festival the 3rd weekend after Labor Day - this year Sept. 26-27 - and, thanks to the virus, plans to hold a very scaled-down version, which is probably why they're not charging the usual $5 entrance fee. The last report I heard, the plants and chiles seemed to have weathered the storm pretty well.
Pueblo
Yesterday I called Discount Tire here in Pueblo and they said sure they could take care of my RV but I'd probably have to wait up to 2 hours because they had appointments booked solid all morning. I'd intended to grin and bear it, but late yesterday afternoon I did a rethink and found another highly rated place called Colorado Tire. They said yes they had tires the right size and yes they could fit me in no problem. So that's where I went first. All the guys there seemed very professional, very pleasant and got me in and out in less than an hour.
The main guy took me to their storeroom to give me my choice - least, medium and most expensive - in other words entry level, regular and top of the line - alternatively, 40,000 miles, 50,000 miles, and 60,000 miles. He said they were all good tires and it was my choice what I wanted. I've never had a tire guy tell me that before, so I went with the spendiest because I've already got nearly 60,000 miles on the RV and I didn't want to have to worry about whether my tires were safe on the road again, as I have for more than the last month.
From there we went to an Albertson's (still a branch of Safeway but the selection was bigger - though that's probably because Pueblo has 107,000 residents), and Spanky's Liquor World - ghastly name but they did have a wide selection, though just not Teacher's Scotch. I likely won't find it in Colorado.
Then I went driving down toward the historic district of town, through Mineral Palace Park and past some old houses. Also some beautiful old buildings. I didn't stop for photos but found these online.
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Rosemount Museum - 1893
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Temple Emanuel - 1900
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Cathedral of the Sacred Heart - 1912-13
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Pueblo County Courthouse - 1908-12
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As I turned east and headed across the Arkansas River, I saw the glitter of a gold dome on my left. I didn't want to go back and track it down, but I'm sure this courthouse is what I saw. Pretty grand building for not being a state capitol, isn't it?
As far as I can tell online, the original dome is still in place but has been covered by sheet metal that's been painted gold. The outer dome is unusually separated from the inner dome by a large space and was originally lit at night by "3,000 incandescent bulbs," according to the application for status as a historic building. I think the original dome wasn't gold but instead carved terra cotta, and I don't know why or when it was covered by the metal. But that gold paint sure shines brightly on a sunny day.
The city's recycling facility is open for 4 days/week only, and for limited hours each day, so I guess it's no surprise there were a lot of folks there: even though the city has residential pickup, not everyone lives in a house in town. They accepted all my recyclables, thank goodness. I had a whole plastic trash bag of them stored in my basement just waiting to be dumped, and I was glad to get rid of them.
Not far away I found an odd, unlabeled park, with stickers but no grass, where the dogs and I took a quick break. I'm guessing it's a multipurpose park because, while we were there, we saw several bicyclists and ATV riders, and there's a sign saying "No fish guts in trash" which suggests you can fish in the river. Because there's also a bridge over the Arkansas River and a sign saying the trail to the bridge is part of 30 miles of trails in Pueblo. That part would take us to Riverwalk, which seems to be a historic area along the Arkansas River where it runs through town.
Back on the road
For the next couple of hours, we climbed from Pueblo at 4,695' to Cañon City at 5,332'. Not really that much of a leap, but I noticed we were higher when we walked around at the campground. (Thinner air makes asthma more noticeable, I'm finding.)
Along the way I was still seeing scrubland but the mountains were showing much closer along the horizon. We also started having very strong crosswinds and I had to hang onto the steering wheel at times.
A few times signs told me I could turn onto the Gold Belt Tour, which is a scenic byway in CO that connects the various gold mining areas here.
I passed the Museum of Colorado Prisons, which is housed in a former state women's prison.
At Cañon City (the official spelling includes the tilde, which makes it sound like "canyon" to English speakers) I found lots of motels and restaurants and tourist activities (rafting is popular), making it clear the town depends on tourism. Since it's only 8 miles from world-famous Royal Gorge, that's not surprising.
Cañon City is also Home of the Music & Blossom Festival, though I'm not sure they held it this year, due to the virus. They say it's a national competition for high schools, middle schools and junior high schools for their concert bands, jazz bands, orchestras and marching bands. So the festival also has a parade with floats (might as well take advantage of the marching bands, after all. Plus they feature the state's oldest rodeo and a carnival as parts of the festivities. It's probably a lot of fun and I have no idea where they put everybody. I wouldn't have thought there'd be that many motel rooms in town.
My original travel plans called for me to be much farther south at Cortez near the Hovenweep National Monument tonight, but that plan got tanked by the snow. I've already got a reservation for next week to stay at this same campground so I could visit the gorge, and I decided to stick with that plan and not go see it today. Besides, I'd done a lot of running around in Pueblo, plus I left La Junta before 8:00 so I was tired and didn't want to deal with my acrophobia today.
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