This morning William and I left our hotel in Canon City for Royal Gorge Bridge and Park.  The Bridge crosses the gorge 955 feet above the Arkansas River and is one of the highest bridges in the world.

We both were very excited to walk across the bridge and peer down at the river below.

There are lots of attractions at the Park such as gondola rides and zip lining across the gorge but we opted to move on to another close by attraction instead.  I loved visiting Mesa Verde to see the Anasazi Indian ruins and I saw in an advertisement that there were Cliff Dwellers in a little town called Manitou Springs so off we drove to see the ruins.

We explored on a self guided tour and were pretty impressed with the ruins.

We did get to talk to a park guide and actually learned that these ruins were not found here but were found in Cortez, AZ and moved to Manitou Springs.  The stones were taken  from a collapsed Ancestral site, shipped by railroad, and assembled resembling those found in the Four Corners area.   I still recommend visiting this site in Manitou Springs as it is very well done.

Manitou Springs sits at the base of Pikes Peak so after visiting the Cliff Dwellers we drove all the way to the summit.  The road is 19 miles long and extremely steep and curvy.  Right now there is construction on a new visitor’s center at the top which will open in the Fall of 2020.

The #1 thing to do at the summit is to enjoy the world famous doughnuts.  The recipe is optimized for the high altitude and cannot be made below the 14,000 foot elevation.  So if you want to try the best tasting summit doughnut ever you must go to the top.  You cannot even ask someone to bring you one down as the doughnut will collapse at lower elevations.

For us, this was the highlight of the day.  We really enjoyed the hour long drive up the mountain.  The views were amazing!

To complete our day we drove three hours north to Estes Park where we will visit Rocky Mountain National Park for the next two days.