Canon City - Stop # 3 - Royal Gorge Train Ride

The Royal Gorge Route - Colorado's Premier Train

https://www.royalgorgeroute.com/

Climb aboard Colorado’s most scenic train for a journey through the spectacular Royal Gorge. Since 1879, these tracks have followed the winding, tumbling Arkansas River deep within the soaring, 1,000-foot granite cliffs of Colorado’s grandest canyon. But this is no fast-food, thrill-ride, adrenaline-pumping, cotton-candy experience. The Royal Gorge Route is, by design, a wifi-free, really-good-food, live-in-the-moment among friendly faces and stunning scenery kind of thing. That’s probably why 100,000 folks ride this historic train every year—and why the Royal Gorge Route Railroad is considered one of America’s Top Trains. Trains run up to four times a day on this remarkable 24-mile roundtrip journey through the Royal Gorge.

Our big adventure of the trip was finally here.  It was time to ride the train!  I'm not sure who was more excited, Doug, Jeannie or Junior?  We drove to the train station and Junior was just hysterical, Train, Train, Choo Choo, Choo Choo.  Katelynn and I went into the station to get our tickets quick.  We took some pictures at the gate and climbed aboard.  We were in one of the Dome cars so we could get the best view of the Canyon.  We basically had 8 seats since the seating is 4 to a table and no one was seated in the other 2 seats. This worked out well with the kids because they were able to sit with Grandma and Grandpa and then would take turns sitting with Dan and I.  We started out with some margarita's for the adults, Katelynn had a shirley temple and Junior had orange juice.  We had an early supper on the train as well.  This helps with little kids too, to keep them busy.  The train ride is 2 hours long and it takes a lot to get my kids to sit for that long.  You are able to walk around the train and the outside cars are pretty nice to go and hang out outside and enjoy the views. They were packed with people from the train.  Dan's parents really enjoyed the train ride.  After 2 hours, great scenery, and supper it was time to head back to the hotel again.

Canon City - Next Stop - Westminster Abbey

Our next stop was to the Westminster Abbey Wine Tasting Room for some free wine tasting.  We, well the adults at least, were excited.  We pulled into the Abbey and it was beautiful.  We wound around to the back and they had a lovely building next to some of their grape vines that you could walk around and some picnic tables and a large grassy area for the kids to run around.  It was a little hectic inside with so many breakable items within Junior's reach.  We walked around their little shop and then up to the wine tasting.  We started with the red wines that were more fruity and skipped all the dry.  I would have tried them all except I knew Junior would not have made it too long in there and didn't want Dan and I chasing him around and accidentally break something.  We all loved the first wine,  insert name, and then we each kind of liked one different one for our second favorites.  Dan's mom and I loved the Apple wine.  I could just sit back and drink that on a nice hot day on the patio and read a good book, yum!  Doug liked the Port wine, that was an after dinner drink and definitely a sipping wine with a lot of alcohol in it.  We each bought a couple bottles of wine and then went outside with the kids and checked out the vineyards.  We just relaxed outside for a bit and let the kids run around and took some pictures.  Had we known that there were picnic tables and such I would have suggested that we buy our lunch and bring it with us, buy a bottle of wine from the abbey and enjoyed a nice picnic outside.

We thought this sign was a little funny.
Here we are pulling into a church and there is an advertisement for beer and a poker tournament!

The Westminster Abbey - Canon City, CO 

Next stop was to the liquor store because we didn't have anything to open our wine with and there was time for a beer before the big finale of the day - the Royal Gorge Train ride.

We checked into our hotel - the Quality Inn and Suites and hung out.  Kids always love hotels.  They ran from room to room and we had sliding glass doors to walk outside.  The stayed at the Quality Inn and Suites.  I would recommend this hotel.  They have a great atmosphere, staff was friendly, nice grill and bar and signs of the celebrities that have stayed at their hotel on the door of the suite they stayed in.  If you go to the bar ask for a list from the bartender of the celebrities and movies that were filmed in Canon City.  Pretty interesting to browse through over a beer or cocktail!

In-Laws Visit and Canon City Vacation - Stops 1 and 2

My in-laws from Minnesota came to visit over Memorial Weekend and stayed for the week to help us out by watching the kids for the week since our daycare provider was on vacation.  They arrived on Saturday evening and after the long drive we just had a nice lazy afternoon and planned our trip to Canon City.
Sunday morning the plan was to leave the house at 8:30am and it actually happened!  My husband was starting to get a little antsy to get on the road, but I was packing, planning, and double-checking everything and had to remind him that I was still on time for our original departure time.  Canon City is about a 3 hour drive for us and we all loaded up in the Tribeca.  The kids were in the 3rd row seating, women in the middle and the men up front to drive and navigate as men should.  The drive went pretty well and Dan's parents enjoyed driving through Denver and seeing the Rockies Stadium and the Bronco's Stadium while passing through.  It always amazes me how quickly you can drive straight through Denver (if there is not a back-up of traffic of course).  I seem to want to compare it to Minneapolis / St. Paul and it is nothing like it.  Denver is compact and Minneapolis is spread out - anyways - back to vacation time.
We pulled into Canon City and decided it was first time to have lunch.  We saw a sign along the road for a place called Big Daddy's Diner , 1950's style.  We were able to get right in and it was right next to the train station and the dinosaur museum.  Junior was especially excited to see the train and Katelynn was thrilled that her meal came with a free ice cream sundae.  The kids didn't eat all that much, but enjoyed their chocolate milk.  We were all happy to be out of the car and start our adventures!

1950's Big Daddy Diner -

Dan, Jeannie, Junior, Doug, and Katelynn

Royal Gorge Train getting ready for it's 12:30 departure.

Junior

Grandpa and Junior

Doug (my father-in-law) and Me

After lunch we headed over to the train station to watch the train depart and then over to the dinosaur museum so the kids could play around and just to see if there was anything interesting in there.

Doug (Dan's Dad) decided that he would pay for our entrance fee to the dinosaur museum and pulled out a credit card and handed it over.  The lady swiped his card and looked at it and handed it back to my father-in-law and said "Sir, this credit card has been expired for 12 years".  (What the?) He looked a little baffled and looked at his credit and said, Well, this shows how often we travel and go out, I have cash does that work?  We laughed so hard about this all week with them.
The dinosaur museum in Canon City is definitely not a must see.  There wasn't much in there to do, just a few things for the kids that they got bored with and a few things to look at for us.  We maybe spent 15 minutes in there.  If you lived around Canon City and had a play date or wanted a day out with your kids then I would say, Yes, go to the dinosaur museum.  They have puzzles and activities for the kids to do and you could spend an hour digging around and reading stuff.  However, if you are on a time crunch to see everything in a couple of days I would pass this up, it's not worth it.

Katelynn searching for ants.

Digging out dinosaur bones.

Juniors attempt to find ants.  Not sure that works so well.

2nd attempt to find them.  Hmmm ....

Nothing like sitting on a bone.

Next Stop - Westminster Abbey Wine Tasting Room.

Finally Time to Plant The Flowers

It was finally relatively nice out this weekend and it was time to plant my flower bed.  I do look forward to this every year.  Heading out to the green house and looking over all the bright colors of flowers, I think I could sit in there for hours and hours.  I refuse to plant unless it is nice out.  This is one of my enjoyments and with that I like to get a little sun!  Katelynn did a fairly good job helping me out this year.  She helped dig up some dirt and planted a few of the flowers, but was side tracked after awhile and was just playing around the yard.  I thought Junior would get into playing in the dirt, but he had something else to do over and over again most of the afternoon, sprinting across the yard, taking a flying leap and landing on a bag of dirt.  Boys will be boys I guess. So here is to a good growing season and keeping the hail this year at a minimum.