Wednesday we woke up and headed down the Arkansas River to the Royal Gorge. This park, owned by the Canyon City municipality, is a weird blend of a natural wonder, a carnival, and even some elements of old-western town entertainment. We did enjoy the three main attractions in the Park - an aerial tram which glides across the gorge, the suspension bridge stretched from rim to rim, and the inclined railway which takes visitors to the bottom. As always, the river looks much bigger and more powerful up-close than from thousands of feet in the air.

From there, we grabbed some lunch at a weird Subway and headed up to Leadville, where Tasha and I met. The memories were plentiful as we cruised through the campus of Colorado Mountain College and down Harrison Ave. White-capped Mt. Elbert (the highest peak in Colorado) and Mount Massive loomed at 14,000 feet elevation. That’s pretty impressive, but the town itself sits at 10,200′ making it the highest incorporated town in the U.S. It’s what drew me here originally and it was great to be back. Unfortunately, two of our favorite haunts - a pizza place and a sandwich shop - have closed since we lived there.

Leaving Leadville we cruised over Fremont Pass past the huge molybdenum mine and Copper Mountain ski area. We headed into Dillon, where we used to come to escape the crazyness of the dorms, and grabbed our hotel for the night. The striking beauty of Summit County is now somewhat marred by the thousands of acres of dead trees that now blanket nearly every slope visible below treeline. An outbreak of the Mountain Pine Beetle has killed over 90% of the lodgepole pines - the dominant tree in the area - making for a startlingly grim scene. It will take much time for this to recover and the question still remains as to whether this will affect tourism in the area. Given that it probably won’t affect skiing all that much, I think summer visitors will have a bigger problem with it than skiers. I guess even the West isn’t immune from forest disasters. Makes me feel a bit less depressed about the loss of Hemlocks in the Smokies. At least the Hemlocks were only a small component of the forest there!