Day 1 Austin to Amarillo Day 2 Amarillo to Raton Day 3 Raton to Castle Rock Day 4 Castle Rock to RMNP Day 5 RMNP to Fort Collins Day 6 Fort Collins to Moab Day 7 Moab to Flagstaff Day 8 Flagstaff to VEGAS Day 9 VEGAS to Las Cruces Day 10 Home Again

Day 3 (7/2/02) - Raton, NM to Castle Rock, CO

We left Raton early and headed up I-25 to Colorado Springs, stopping only briefly for another photo op at the state border (Raton Pass.)  We had intended to go up Pike's Peak first, but a road sign pointing to Seven Falls was too tantalizing to pass up.  The entry fee to hike up Seven Falls was, however, fairly easy to pass up.  We chose instead to hike up the 1-mile Mt. Cutler trail that climbs up to the canyon rim and overlooks Seven Falls from a distance.  Good thing we didn't pay the 7 bucks apiece-- the falls weren't particularly falling that day due to the drought.  We then went up the North Cheyenne Canyon Road to Helen Hunt Falls, stopping for a picnic lunch by North Cheyenne Creek before hiking around the falls for a bit.  Helen Hunt Falls also weren't falling very much.

We headed out of North Cheyenne Park to Pike's Peak but missed the turnoff for the cog railway station.  So we ended up at the base of the Pike's Peak Highway.  Upon asking the gate attendant where the cog railway was, he looked at me quizzically and said, "you mean there's a train that goes up there?!"  Everyone's a comedian.  After being redirected to Manitou Springs, we ended up on the 4:20 train, which took about an hour to get to the summit, traveling through some spectacular scenery and up grades as steep as 25%!  The summit was a balmy 40 degrees Fahrenheit and cloudy, and we had an hour to walk around shivering and taking photos before the train left to return to Manitou Springs.  By the time we got back down to Manitou, it was 7:30.  We had originally planned for a night on the town in Denver, but that wasn't looking very likely.  We did, however, drive through Garden of the Gods on the way out of town and take some spectacular shots of a raging mountain thunderstorm.  As we pulled around to one particular overlook, we saw one poor couple in the midst of their wedding ceremony as the lightning cracked all around.  There was some bad traffic on I-25, so we didn't make it to Denver that night at all.  We ended up staying in Castle Rock.