Canon City, Colorado

 OK, let's get this one over with.  This stop involved some OK parts, but it got off on a very wrong foot, thanks to the RV park owner!!!!!!  But more on that later.  For now, we'll concentrate on the better aspects.  While planning our get away from Eureka Springs, we had really expected to go directly to our favorite parts of CO, or at least go to Colorado Springs (Bill was thinking of doing Pike's Peak), but the former was all booked up for pretty much the whole month of July, and the latter was on fire!  Fortunately, Bill was able to think outside of our self-imposed box and come up with a different route into CO.  We were enroute to Mystery Spot #1 (sorry, I decided I still can't quite bring myself to publicize - to the world wide web - my favorite places in CO, so if you really want to know where, you'll have to email me!), a place we had visited overnight once many years ago.  We had both liked the area and thought it might be a good one to return to someday.  So here was our someday!  And Canon City seemed like a good waypoint, and it would be interesting to see the Royal Gorge.  So, despite our bad start in Canon City, let's enjoy these cat antics and this pretty end of day scene and go from there, shall we?

 Kitties out for their happy hour stroll.

And Tracky wins the pole-climbing contest!

 Our visit to Royal Gorge.  To be honest, while it was a gorge and a neat bridge and all, it struck us as mostly an overworked, overpriced, over-advertised tourist trap.  There are far more impressive cracks and bridges to be had.  But hopefully you seeing these photos will help us get our moneys' worth!

 It was too warm for me, but otherwise it was a pretty day - love those Colorado mountain clouds!!

People riding the Arkansas River (it was pretty cool to have followed this river from the eastern states where it was big enough to be a navigable river with ports west to its headwaters in CO!).

 Bill on a bridge.  

 You can also pay to drive your car across the bridge, or take a little bus tour.  But we figured it was expensive enough just to walk across!

Here you can see the bridge and the river below, for an idea of size and scope.

 And now?  The rant!  Consider this an anti-advertisement!!!!  Unless you like staying at an RV park where the owner is very volatile, unreasonable, and threatens to kick you out for saying something he doesn't like hearing, I highly recommend you stay elsewhere when in Canon City!!  DON'T stay at the Royal View Camp Resort!  And our major infraction, that set him off to the point of practically yelling at me in front of other customers, etc.?  Well, while they have a big driveway, they narrow it down into two very slim lanes -  allegedly to slow traffic (I would think the speed bumps they also have would do that trick well enough).  But the very real practical effect that I can vouch for is that you have to be VERY CAREFUL not to scrape your RV on the posts and boulders lining the lanes!!!!!!!  So we told him we had trouble with his entry, and he, in turn, read us both the riot act.  If I had been able find another spot on this Friday afternoon (hard to do in popular places on weekends!!), and if Bill had not been too tired to deal with it, I would've moved to another RV park in a heartbeat!  I actually scoped out the other places and found some openings, but Bill wouldn't move.  Rats!!!!!   Honestly, this episode ruined Canon City for me.  And I don't care to ever go back.  Additionally, I will take any other "1" ratings I see in my oft-used rvparkreviews.net website MUCH more seriously in the future!!!!!!  Yes, there was a "1" before the "1" I wrote for them (actually, once I looked closer - after the fact, unfortunately - there were LOTS of "1s!!!")!!!!  And I have read several other negative reviews for that place that cited the owners as the reason and that they would never stay there again either!  At the very least I can say that's no way to run a business!!  Pretty much the opposite of the customer is always right!  So, for other RVers out there - beware of this one!!  You might get lucky and not piss him off - or you might not!