Day Four...are we ready??

ROYAL GORGE

With a hour and half drive to Royal Gorge, we entered the beautiful park. We decided to take the tram to the bottom of the gorge before walking across the bridge. The boys were a little unnerved as we descended over 1050 feet to the bottom in a cage type ride. After getting back to the top of the gorge we took off walking across the bridge. The wind was really blowing hard and was very scary looking down into the gorge. The bridge had a flag from every state of the union from one side of the bridge to the other. Drake and Janie wanted to ride the Skycoaster that was on the west side of the gorge but couldn't get Dad or Logan to join us. It was a very scary ride but exhilarating and great photos of the ride. We then took the tram back across the gorge and had lunch.

WHITE WATER RAFTING

We arrived at Echo Canyon Rafting company and signed in and gathered all gear required for this raft trip. After our name wasn't called, we were instructed to go back into the office where we were informed we had missed our trip. We had booked our trip with another outfitter and miscommunication between them and us. There was nothing that could be done except for book another trip for first thing the next morning, Sunday.

HELICOPTER RIDE

Well, they say things happen for a reason. We all took the disappointment in stride and we then went to work on plan B. Our first stop was at the Heliport to check out a hellicopter ride. Dad and Janie had taken this ride 10 years ago and it was the most amazing helicopter rider you can image. The boys really wanted to do this so we all signed up for the third option...the most thrills and of course the most expensive. This ride was around the outer edge of the gorge with many banks, turns, dives and zero gravity. At the end of the ride, we banked hard and went down into the gorge right by the bridge and at many times you would swear we were going to crash into the gorge. Janie took a movie the whole time to capture boys expressions and views from the ride. Janie got sick after filming and riding backward in the helicopter and it took several hours for her to recover.

MT. PRINCETON

Since we still had several hours left in the day and of course we weren't about to go back to our room until we were totally exhausted, Dad headed towards Buena Vista and Mt. Princeton to a hot springs spa. We first went into the stream that had a very hot spring running into it so the boys quickly started building a rock pool to contain the hot water. The boys braved the center of the stream a couple of times but the water was extremely cold and they didn't stay too long in the center. Drake went up and check one of the two upper pools and one was feed and warmed by the hot springs. Janie relaxed and the boys did alot of swimming, dunking and playing in the pool Back to the stream and after a couple of hours, we were starving and ready to head back to Colorado Springs. It was the most beautiful drive with the sun setting in the background and meadows were so green with all of the spring rain.