Castle Rock with Royal Gorge Railroad

For an outing on Sunday August 16th when visiting Dan we took two cars and traveled southward about 90 miles to ride the Royal Gorge Railroad in Canyon City, beyond Colorado Springs. Carrie drove one car with Lillian, William, and Irene. Dan drove his truck with Frank, Vivian, and me. Vivian had her choice to ride with the old folks or with her siblings. She chose to come with her dad's vehicle and grandparents because "it would be quieter so she could read". The time in the car was about 1½ hours. 

Once at our destination, Frank and Dan checked in early at the train station to pick up our tickets. They made arrangements that when we returned closer to departure time, we would have assistive transportation down to the train boarding site. I waited near a black caboose at the far end of the parking lot while they completed the transactions. The caboose was a cafe/restaurant with the cute title Happy Endings and the subliminal tongue-in-cheek subtitle of "come again".

Carrie and three of the kids went on to secure our seating at a different nearby restaurant. All eight of us had enough time to lunch at a Whitewater Rooftop Social. This eating place was close. To return for the train ride we just had to cross the tracks and head down a bit, passing that black Happy Endings Caboose on a corner along the way. 

Per the restaurant's website and brochure, Whitewater Rooftop Social was "Built from the Ground Up":

We wanted a place that feels like Canon City: easygoing, outdoors-forward, and a little elevated. So we built a modern rooftop where you can toast the view, eat a great sandwich, and celebrate wins big and small. In January 2021, a semi-truck accident destroyed the Royal Gorge Rafting and Zipline Tours office at Fourth Street and U.S. 50. The driver of the semi-truck was cited for careless driving after police determined they were not paying attention to the road. Though the building sustained catastrophic damage, all employees working inside miraculously escaped entirely unscathed, with the truck stopping just a few feet away from a worker. Rather than repair the damage, we saw an opportunity to create something new. Construction on our brand new 4,000 square-foot building began in September 2022, and Whitewater Rooftop Social opened its doors in 2024.

Dan had arranged for us to have limousine service from the ticket station to our specific car to board the train. I was impressed with the length of the train. That would have been a long haul on foot over pebbly turf for Frank with his rollator and me. The "limo" was an extra length golf cart, so happily all eight of us could ride—a neat, extra treat for the kiddos. The limo passed the long length of train cars en route.

Reaching the open air car, next to the car for our seating, we could look back along the length of cars and see how far we'd come.

Our tickets on the train were rated Deluxe Class and the wood paneled cars were indeed luxurious. The wood on the walls and ceiling was highly polished and spoke of great craftsmanship. Our car's position among the train cars was great. Since our assigned seats were in a car that was adjacent to the open air car, we could go back and forth quite easily. We had chairs at two tables, so there was a place to put our food, drinks, and to browse our information brochures. The kids had a resting place for books they were reading or for the card games they were playing.

Route Details

• Starting Point: Departs from and returns to the historic Cañon City Santa Fe Depot at 401 Water Street in Cañon City, CO. (lower right corner of image)
• Path: Travels west alongside the rushing Arkansas River directly through the narrow gorge, with granite cliffs towering over 1,000 feet above the tracks. 
• Key Landmarks: Crosses the famous Hanging Bridge (built in 1879) suspended over the river and passes through local tunnels and historic railroad sites. 
• Mid Point : Reverses direction at Parkdale, an unincorporated community resting at an elevation of 5,732 feet (upper left image of image)
• Duration: The 24 mile round-trip excursion takes approximately 2 hours. 

Looking out the windows we noticed the water running very close to the tracks. We even saw some rafters flow by along the Arkansas River. I wondered why it is the Arkansa River in Colorado. My geography ignorance was showing. I have since learned that the Arkansas River is a major 1,469-mile-long tributary of the Mississippi River that flows east and southeast through Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. It is the sixth-longest river in the United States.

On a long train going around a bend it is fun to take pictures of the later cars on the train. Dan actually walked the entire length of the train with some of the kids. There was a dome car, but being outdoors gives the best gorge experience.

At the very bottom of the gorge, slightly above the water surface, is wedged the Hanging Bridge at a point where the gorge narrows to 30 feet.This unique railroad bridge was built in 1879 where the canyon was too narrow for standard tracks. An engineer suspended an iron bridge directly from the smooth rock walls above the water. It carries the tracks for the Royal Gorge Route Railroad. The next two images show this span between the very close vertical walls of the gorge. The tracks run orthogonal to the span, not parallel along it, as is typical.

When you look up, directly over the Hanging Bridge, located high above the canyon stretching across, is the Royal Gorge Suspension Bridge about 956 feet above the Arkansas River. The famous pedestrian and tourist suspension bridge was built in 1929, featuring a wooden plank deck. It was once the highest bridge in the world. My guess is that all those black trusses with lighting on them are for twilight rides on the train. Those night-time journeys must also be very impressive.

The sights outside the train were awesome but being indoors in that pleasant atmosphere was also enjoyable. Vivian got pretty engaged in her book but not without taking periodic breaks to gaze out at the scenery passing by the windows. Lillian and William, interspersed with roaming among, in between, and outside the cars, would play rousing rounds of the card game of Thirty-One.

A favorite among all, not just the kids, were the desserts made as part of exquisitely prepared cuisine. Chocolate cake was the dominant choice. Gooey as it was, Frank ate his Cinnamon Roll outdoors in the open air car, so reluctant was he to miss any of the striking landscape.

At the completion of our round trip, we made quick stop in the gift shop to both look around and use the facilities before the drive home. I could not resist taking a few photos of the tiles in the bathroom. They read from left to right:

• Eight-Wheeled American Locomotive
• Double-Truck Narrow Gauge Tank Locomotive
• Double-End Tank Locomotive

All I bought was a tote bag and an embroidered patch as mementoes. 

Once home we just enjoyed domestic activities. I had ordered a train for the kids that chugs along and places dominoes in a row, setting up a line for chain reactions in a domino cascades. They had a blast. Even Irene got into loading it.

The kids chilled and had some recharge time (pun intended) on their electronic devices. Lillian and William played some co-op games together on their iPads. 

 

I asked for a bit of musical concerts and they obliged. I knew the performances had to be brief. It had been a full day and the next day was a school day. Vivian played the clarinet for us. She was picked for a solo at one of her elementary schools concerts. She is in middle school now.

Lillian played the violin and the guitar to our delight. She was the opening number at one of her teacher's student concerts, playing the national anthem on her guitar.

I asked Lillian (10) and William (8) to show me their rooms. I had seen Irene's (5) and Vivian's (12) in the earlier part of the visit but have no pictures. Lillian is horse crazy and it showed in her decor and dresser display. The mirror reflecting her smiling face once belong to my daughter Robin (Dan's sister, Lillian's aunt) in her young girl horse-focused childhood. Lillian was thrilled to have it mailed out to her from Oklahoma. It is heart-warming to see how such an inanimate object can still delight a little girl decades later.

There is a music corner in Lillian's room where she practices. It sure appears that brother William is an eager audience. We were given a demo before moving on to William's room.

William is Minecraft crazy. Notice the wall decor and the shirt he is wearing.  Once prompted he was willing to show off his trophies. I have very few pictures of William to show in this blog. He is always moving and either I am not quick enough with the camera, or else the photo is blurred. He does not play an instrument yet but he got a drum set with earphones for Christmas. In the third photo I am playing and dancing to the beat which is inaudible to the rest of the room. I guess you could say I am literally dancing to the beat of a different drummer.

 

Lillian and William were already PJ'd up for bed when we took our traditional goodbye photo commemorating the visit. Frank and I were flying back to California on Monday. We made sure we got up early enough distribute hugs and say goodbye to the kids before they left for school.

Monday morning, I misread, or rather misremembered, our flight's departure time. To my horror, we had one hour less for the trip to the airport than I had originally had budgeted. To compound the problem, our new-to -the-area Uber driver wanted to drop us at the wrong terminal. I insisted he follow the signs and not his "map". After a second airport go-around, we did get dropped at the Southwest terminal. The Uber driver got no tip from us and I avoided reviewing him rather than giving him a bad score. Frank and I flung our luggage at the curbside skycap, along with a generous tip. The manager of the wheel chair service himself, briskly whisked both Frank and me to our gate just as the pre-boarding was beginning. We made our flight by the skin of our teeth. 

This was a fantastic visit. Our two excursions to the Harry Potter  Exhibit and the Royal Gorge Railroad were both well suited to a mixed age crowd and created many many awesome memories for us. The downtime at home with the grandkids was great too, helping Frank and me, even at a California to Colorado distance, learn a bit more about their personalities, talents, and likes.

I think this photo captures one of the many high peaks and happy memories for me. Frank is in his glory, enjoying the weather, the breeze, the gentle sun, the towering canyon walls, the babbling water, and the motions and sounds of a ride on the rails, while indulging in his most favorite infatuation... trains. Note the shirt he is wearing.

Castle Rock with Harry Potter

Frank and I flew out to visit Dan and his family in Castle Rock, CO, Thursday, August 13 - Monday, August 17, 2026. The departure of our flight out from San Jose CA was delayed 45 minutes (nothing really in airport time) due to lightning threats at our Denver destination. Otherwise our flight was timely. Our drink service was eliminated, with apologies, because the turbulence was sufficient enough that the captain kept the seatbelt sign on the entire time and did not permit the cabin crew to be up and about. The bumpiness did not bother me (although it usually does). I had surprised Frank by springing more money for extra legroom seats, so maybe the added room helped. Dan had a last minute work commitment, ironically in California, and could not pick us up as planned, so we took an Uber to Dan's house in Castle Rock.

We've since learned that August is not a good time to fly in and out of Denver due to a high frequency of thunderstorms that month. I was always cautious of snow in the winter in Denver, but summer time travel? The plane can fly fine. It is the safety of the ground crew that is the issue since they must be clear of the tarmac due to threat of lightning. After a bit of online research I learned

At Denver International Airport (DEN) and most aviation or outdoor worksites across Colorado, the standard protocol mandates that ground and ramp crews must be brought indoors when lightning is within 10 miles. While the general scientific and aviation baseline for stopping ramp activities (like fueling) is a 5-mile radius, Denver's severe weather protocols specifically use a 10-mile notification and shelter trigger due to how rapidly storms develop and move across the Front Range.

Dan's flight on Friday was not as fortunate as ours. What was supposed to be a 1:00 pm flight from CA did not get realized until late in the day due to Denver weather and so he did not arrive home until after 10:00 pm Friday evening. Delays were due to lightning threats at Denver. Frank and I were lucky all had worked out well for us the previous day. We got to rest up Friday, the day after we'd traveled. We enjoyed watching the various storm squalls and intermittent rail downpours from the porch of the house. We talked to Dan while he was at the airport waiting to fly out. He confessed he was jealous. He loves to watch the extremes of mountain weather from his porch. The following photo shows just how bright and sunny it can be in between those threatening episodes.

Thursday had been a travel day. Friday was a day of rest. Our first outing was on Saturday to a Harry Potter Exhibition in Denver about 45 minutes north/northwest of home base, actually a bit closer than the airport had been.

Shortly after we entered, we saw the luggage trolley used in the movie scene where Harry is setting out to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He boards the Hogwarts Express from Platform 9¾. Other props from the movie are also displayed throughout the exhibit. But the exhibit is not just visual. There are many interactive spots to engage involving wands, potions, Quidditch, and dueling, etc. 

The first room is for immersion in the scenery of Hogwarts. It is a large circular theatre surrounding the visitors with expansive walls of scenery in and around Hogwarts during various seasons.

Many exhibits ask you to select the house of Hogwarts where you'd like to belong. The choices were: 

Gryffindor (Lion) home of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Albus Dumbledore

Ravenclaw (Eagle) home of Luna Lovegood

Slytherin (Serpent) home of  Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy

Hufflepuff (Badger) home of Cedric Diggory

There is even a sorting hat that, if you place yourself in just the right position, it will assign you a house. "Just the right position" is the key phrase. Only I was able to get the hat to sit on top of my head.

There were more props and costumes from the movies. Following are the gold and black uniform of a Huffelpuff Student and the green garb of Bellatrix Lestrange, an evil villainess.

The set of the Great Hall of Hogwarts Castle fascinated me. Visually it is stunning. The display changes with the seasons. My favorite was this Halloween one; although the snow falling in the Christmas one was awe-inspiring, also.

I also found the history of the design and building of the Great Hall set for the movies to be impressive. Read below for more background.

I took a photo of our whole crew (minus me the photographer) posed in front of the Great Hall.

The wand scene at Ollivanders along Diagon Alley had always been fun for me to imagine in the book. One room of the exhibit was dedicated to wands with the storage shelving and detail information on the wand of each character. Lillian posed near a huge many-times size replica of Dumbledore's wand.

Another room within the exhibit included interactive activities for magic potions. A "cookbook" listed a combination of three ingredients that the potion make had to remember. Choosing from a list, the maker adds the correction ingredients to the cauldron to be declared successful or not as a wizard. Cauldrons "bubbled "with different colors of the magical broth. Everybody in our party got in the act.

A botanical room in the exhibit bore the experience of repotting infant mandrakes. Both Vivian and I tried our hand at that agricultural endeavor. Note that Vivian selected a truly appropriate shirt for this trip.

There was a darkened room where would-be wizards could conjure up their own patronus. Harry's patronus was a stag. Albus Dumbledore's patronus was a phoenix. Minerva McGonagall's patronus was a cat. After correctly answering questions on a screen, your patronus was revealed. One of the options for a patronus was a horse.Try as she might, Lillian, the horse lover, could never conjure up a horse. Everybody else at some point got a horse. Lillian tried. And she tried. And she tried over, and over yet again, with absolutely no success. Everybody else was was rooting for Lillian. Fortunately it became a laughable situation despite Lillian's good-natured frustration. No horse for Lillian. Sigh... We moved on.

A teacher who wears pink in Harry Potter is Dolores Umbridge. There was a replica of her feminine pink-hued office, complete with moving kitty plates. She was a nasty teacher, per my memory, and I was not fond of her. However, I welcomed the opportunity to sit down and rest a bit at her desk.

We moved on to a Quidditch section in the exhibit where you could ride a broomstick or toss a ball. Here are Dan and Lillian, Vivian, and Irene, on what I think is a Nimbus 2000 model. William has his own inimitable style on the broom stick. 

As Chasers, each of us tried to toss a big red ball, the Quaffle, through the hoop goal. One of my small regrets is that I had forgotten so much of my Harry Potter trivia going through this extensive exhibit. I may have missed many of the nuances at the time. However, in writing this blog I refreshed my memory on players in the game of Quidditch.

The Four Player Roles of Seven Quidditch Team Members

• Chasers (3 players per team): They handle the large red ball called the Quaffle. They pass it between themselves and try to throw it through one of the three opponent goal hoops to score 10 points per goal. 
• Keepers (1 player per team): They guard the goal hoops to block incoming shots from the opposing Chasers. They also act as defensive leaders who oversee the play around the goal area.
• Beaters (2 players per team): They carry small clubs or bats to hit the heavy, aggressive Bludgers away from their own teammates and direct them toward the opposing team. 
• Seekers (1 player per team): They focus on finding and catching the tiny, fast-moving Golden Snitch. Catching the Snitch awards 150 (or 30 in some modern adaptations) extra points and immediately ends the match. 

I remembered to look up while touring the exhibit. Lots of interesting items were on the ceiling. There was a gigantic-sized replica of a Time-Turner, a magical hourglass necklace use to travel back in time. Hermione used it to take multiple classes at the same time. Each turn of the hourglass reverses time by one hour, with a safe maximum of five hours.

Also overhead was a model of Fawkes the Phoenix. Fawkes can burst into flames when his time ends and be reborn from his own ashes. His tears have strong healing powers, and his tail feathers form the core of both Harry Potter's and Lord Voldemort's wands.

Along the walls in two cases were many devices from the movies. This was toward the end of our tour and my brain was gettin saturated. I took photos and perhaps some time in the future I will enlarge those pictures and see what I can recognize. They certainly evoke a medieval vibe. Harry Potter is not set in the medieval period, but it heavily uses medieval aesthetics, themes, and traditions. Curious I found this timeline on the web.

Key Milestones of the Era

• 10th Century (c. 993 AD): Founding of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry by Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin.
• 11th Century: Emergence and early development of the sport of Quidditch.
• 13th Century: Invention of Floo powder by Ignatia Wildsmith and the inception of the first Triwizard Tournament.
• 14th Century: Invention of the Sorcerer's Stone by Nicolas Flamel.

Dan had a close encounter with a Chinese Fireball Dragon, faced by Viktor Krum in the Tournament of Wizards. For those trying to remember who the other three competitors and their dragon opponents were, I included that information below.

The last station we went through at the end of our journey was a wand battle. Here are each of the kids battling away as a reenactment of that closing scene of the final movie.

We spent about 1¼ hours going through the exhibit. The estimated time had been 1-1½ hours. I think I might have lingered longer had I remembered more. Maybe not. I looked forward to sitting down for a spell. The displays were very well done and had much of interest to all levels of fans and varied ages of kids. Dan did a great job in finding this activity for our crew ranging in age from 5 years to 77 years.

I started this post with a weather discussion. I will end it with more meteorology. We were headed to a place to grab some food on our drive home from the Harry Potter Exhibit when it began to rain, and then rain harder. Then we realized the precipitation was hitting hard and was ice pellets. We were in a hail storm! It had come on so suddenly, kind of like a flash flood from the sky. We were near the restaurant so Dan pulled off into close parking garage. Other cars had the same idea and several of us were all huddled under the entrance. Unfortunately the gate would not raise and let the cars in because it was an employees only section and needed an access card to operate the gate. The kids were squealing with excitement and glee. Irene was initially a bit scared but she came around. No way was she going to sit in the car when her brother and sister were out having a roaring good time.

We were a jolly group. Drivers inching close to each other and pointing their car every which way to let others behind them get some shelter. Then, either one of the drivers or an employee of one of the stores appeared out of nowhere and used his access card to let us all in. We drive around inside the garage for a spot close to the restaurant where we planned to eat. When we drove through the uplifted gate, ice pellets were accumulating at the garage entrance.

We entered the Great Divide Brewery and Roadhouse, Lone Tree location, just north of Castle Rock, via the parking garage entrance. By the time we were seated by the window the hail storm had subsided. That's OK. We'd had a close up look while we were in it.

 

The kids played a bit of cornhole on two ramps set up outside that window. We also noted the nearby accumulation of "snow", aka ice pellets, at an alternate entrance door.

On our outing that day, Frank and I were introduced to more that the world of Harry Potter. We also experienced the mercurial weather world of Colorado. This was certainly a full fun day packed with surprises and adventures.