On Friday, July 17th, we went to Royal Gorge Bridge in Canon City, Colorado.
Royal Gorge Bridge is one of the world's highest suspension bridges, standing 956 feet about the Arkansas River. It is located in Canon City, about one hour and 45 minutes from the Jellystone Park in Larkspur, CO, where we are staying. The views even driving up to it to park are absolutely breathtaking.
Royal Gorge You enter in through their lobby, where you can purchase tickets. We purchased tickets to walk across the bridge. You could also buy tickets for their other attractions, like the The zip line and Skycoaster, but we decided to wait so Beau could see them and decide if he wanted to do them or not. The kids also picked up there Junior Ranger pamphlets since Royal Gorge is a state monument.
After you bought your tickets, you walked out where there were breath taking views of the gorge before you cross the bridge.
There were several spots where you could take amazing selfies!
After checking out the different lookout spots, we started our trek across the bridge.
The bridge is 1,260 feet long. There are flags across it representing the different states across the country.
Of course we had to find the Texas flag and take a picture!
Some of the boards were a little creaky! And there were some boards that had a pretty good space between them, about 3”. It doesn’t seem like a lot when you read it but when you are looking down 200 feet that 3” is huge!
It took us about 30 minutes to get across, as we were stopping and taking all sorts of pictures and videos. If you just want to walk directly across then you could probably do it in like 5 minutes.
After getting across, you walked up a hill to a play area. There were slides and sort of like a fort to go in, they had a sand pit area as well.
The kids stayed in here for about and hour and a half!
My friend Amanda watched the kids while Bryan and I and our friends Daniel and Stephanie, who live in Denver, went and grabbed a beer from their beer stand.
Bryan and Daniel mustered up the courage to do the zip line across the gorge so we walked up a pretty fierce hill to wait in line. When we got there we found out that someone had passed out on the line and they were waiting for that person to recover before opening it back up. Bryan and Daniel decided that they didn’t want to do the zip line anymore!
We (carefully) walked back down and found some seats at a covered pavilion overlooking the gorge. Just beautiful! Bryan grabbed some chips and a drink from the concession stand located nearby because we hadn’t eaten lunch and we were getting hungry!
The kids were hot so I took them to a stand to get sno-cones. They all wanted rainbow flavor!
Then Amanda took the kids to a bird show that they put on every hour. It was free and located in a building right across from where we were sitting! The kids got to sit front row. Beau said there was an eagle and a barn owl in the show.
At the end the kids found a ranger and got their badges!
We stayed about four hours at Royal Gorge Bridge. We spent $76.00 getting in - two adult tickets and one child (7 yo) and Harper(3 yo) was free; $21.03 on four sno-cones for the kids; $17.89 on two craft beers, $19.00 on two bags of chips and a beer, and $33.69 at the gift shop when exiting the park - I think Bryan bought a sticker for our cooler and the kids each a compass (he is a sucker!)
This is definitely a place I would recommend for visitors! So cool!
