Day 2 - Amarillo, Texas to Canon City, Colorado

Day 2 – We started the day driving west on I-40 out of Amarillo and then taking back roads to see the location of old Tascosa, a frontier town where Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett walked the streets.  A town on the low water crossing of the Canadian River where cattle trails headed north to stockyards.  A town used by the cowboys of the Frying Pan and XIT ranches that were nearby.  All that remains today is a Boot Hill cemetery named after the one in Dodge City.  This is located on Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch that was established in 1939.  As a kid who wanted to be a cowboy, I thought it was a great place for me until I learned that it was for orphans and under-privileged children.

We continued on to Dalhart, the town in Texas that usually makes the 6:00 o’clock news as the coldest town in Texas on winter nights.  We hooked up with highway 87 once more and took it into New Mexico across scenic country into the town of Raton.  During yesterday’s drive through the Panhandle the only wildlife we witnessed were highway alligators so it was a nice surprise to see antelopes alongside the highway today.

This was Rita’s first time in this northern part of New Mexico but I realized that it was my third time to cross the Raton Pass.  My first time was in 1946 when my older brother, mother, father, and I crammed ourselves into a 1940 Ford pickup truck pulling an Airstream trailer.  My father worked for a wealthy Houston rice farmer who had a ranch in Lander, Wyoming, and he asked my Dad to deliver the truck and trailer there.  My second time was in 1961 when a friend and I drove my Corvair to Colorado on a vacation.  The roads have changed each time.

In Raton we drove north on I-25 into Colorado to Pueblo where we stopped for lunch and gasoline.  Then we took highway 50 west to Canon City.  We were too early to check into our room so we drove straight to the Royal Gorge.  First we walked across the high suspension bridge, peering over the rail at the Arkansas River below.  The bridge was completed in 1929 and sits 956 feet above the river.  We walked back across the bridge and took the aerial tram across the gorge.  The tram is 2,200 feet in length and sits 1,178 feet above the river.   We saw elk, bison, and bighorn sheep in the wildlife park then, once more, walked across the bridge.  I drove across the bridge in 1961 so I didn’t feel the need to do that again.  Finally we took the steep incline railway to the floor of the gorge where we saw the train pass through.  We thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon at Royal Gorge.

We came back to check into our motel then drove into Canon City for a nice dinner at Di Rito’s Italian restaurant.  We took a self-guided driving tour around this pretty little town before calling it a day.