It is always hard to say goodbye to a neat place but we had to get on the road again. We were gonna head straight home stopping somewhere for the night. But with Gerald's persuasion, we decided to take the scenic route home.

We were heading out of town and saw an elk on the side of the road dead. On the other side of the road Lisa saw a coyote or wolf looking to score some elk for breakfast. We had such good luck the night before watching deer that we thought we would try to watch a coyote. I turned the van around and, of course he fled. We parked there for about 15 minutes waiting to see if he would cross the street to the elk but he never did. He would poke his head out every now and then but never came out like when Lisa saw him so we drove on.

We went north about an hour through Silverton to Ouray and then over to the Royal Gorge. Lisa had been to Ouray when she was younger and said it was pretty neat. It has a lot of hot, natural springs around. We saw some waterfalls and more beautiful mountains as we made our way up to 11,000 feet. We were on the lookout for more wildlife but only saw the occasional deer and even a beaver.

We stopped at a waterfall and tunnel Lisa had remembered on her previous trip and took some pictures. She said it had not changed a bit. We then headed east through Montrose and into Freemont where the Royal Gorge is at.

We stopped at Buckskin Joe's to pickup some brochures on the Gorge and were just about to leave when we heard, ALL ABOARD. The little train that goes on a 30 minute ride through the Royal Gorge Park was about to leave. Jantzen was NOT about to let us leave without doing that. So we bought tickets and hopped on. It was a neat little train that took us within 3/4 of a mile from the Royal Gorge. We stopped at an observation platform that gave us a great view of the Royal Gorge bridge and the Arkansas River below, that came in handy.

After the train ride and some more souvenir shopping we were headed to the Gorge. We hadn't decided whether to take the Gondola across the bridge or walk across or just just drive across. But it didn't matter. As soon as we left the parking lot a huge fog rolled in that Jantzen would call freaky. We could not see 50' in front of us. Now THAT was freaky; driving through mountains with hairpin turns and you can only see 50' in front of you. We made it to the entrance to the Royal Gorge and the fog had not lifted a bit. We didn't have time to stick around to see if it would go away so we left. That was disappointing. I had been several times and Lisa had been there too so it would have been cool to take the kids. But whatcha gonna do?

We called it a day in Pueblo where we checked into a brand new Wingate hotel (room 110). Of course the kids had to have a pool. So we checked in then went to eat at Red Lobster. After dinner the kids swam for an hour or so then we watched Robots on PPV before calling it a night.