Rail and Raft

Just to entertain myself – I went looking for rafting in the Colorado Springs area.

Hello! The Arkansas River is just up the road and there are more than a few rafting companies out of Canon City. Did I want to do Class IV & V rapids? I don’t think so. Class II to III are much more to my liking. Plus there is always the chance (extremely high as it turns out) of being in a raft with a load of people having their first experience on a river.  Class II & III are one thing – higher difficulty rapids increases my chance of taking an unwanted swim…

So I emailed off to several firms and Raft Masters replied – so that is where I booked. Canon City isn’t that far and turned out to be not difficult at all to find. In the morning I took a ride on the Royal Gorge Railway.

We started at the Station –

and headed up the Gorge. I thought that I could see something from the Dome Car. Turned out that really was the location for food and it wasn’t like I was looking to eat. Instead – I did the entire 12 miles out and 12 back in the open air car.

which looks like this

the morning picture gallery

There are a number of raft companies on the Arkansas River as you can see.

After lunch, we headed out to the Big Horn Sheep Canyon. There were six of us – a couple from outside Austin, a family of three from Austin (just random assignments – go figure) and me. I was the only one of us six who had rafted before. Our guide was a Noah in his third year of guiding.

Funny thing – I was tired when I returned to Ft Carson