Road Trip To California - Day 3 (Canon City, CO to Green River, UT)

So...another day has gone by... one filled with high elevations and low temperatures... The lowest it got today was 26 degrees!! That was on top the continental divide at about 12,000 ft elevation... There was atleast 1 foot of snow up there with more coming down all day. It's pretty crazy.

Before that, this morning we went to the Royal Gorge, which is apparently the highest suspension bridge in the world, over like 1,200 feet high.... They had this thing called the Sky Coaster, which is just like one of those giant human swings, except on this one you swung out over the canyon... It was pretty insane. I saw this girl down the way who was over the fence and climbing around on the rocks with a mother who wanted her to come back. I kinda laughed, she was gutsy, being roughly 1200 feet above a huge gorge at which the bottom is the shallow Arkansas River. Dad and I got to talking to her and her family a little bit and discovered that she too wanted to the SkyCoaster. (Dad and I talked about it earlier, but I was a little jittery.) So anyway, we decided to save some money and go together. Her name was Lacy; we made small talk while rising high above the canyon about how apparently there is nothing to do in Iowa and other random stuff. She got the responsibility of pulling the cord. "3,2,1.. GO!" My stomach lept in my throat and the both of us screamed bloody murder! It was really cool... I no it's cliche but I kinda felt like a bird...

Well, the rest of the afternoon was spent wandering 1 1/2 hours up a two-lane highway in a mild snowstorm that apparently was closed until June. Our goal was to swing through Aspen and eat dinner there on the way to Utah. However, about 15 miles before we were to hit Aspen, a sign read, "ROAD CLOSED" with huge blockades in the road... Maggie told us we should take this dirt road next to the highway. So we did for about two-tenths of a mile until it ended completely up an bank and into a river. Haha, it was crazy. So we turned around and headed back... All in all, we lost like 3 hours, but no biggie... We were able to shoot some fun pictures, get a little bit lost (no thanks to Maggie, our navigator), and experience the absolute serenity of the cool Colorado air with the silence of snow falling and a slight wisp of streams in the background... This day was sweet.. Also, what was cool... Dad and I listened to a Donald Miller sermon while driving through the mountains. It was a dual sermon with John MacMurray (whose nature photography has been featured in National Geographic) and it talked about where photography and theology coincide. It was pretty sweet.

Other adventures of the day included finding an abandoned mine town, which was cool. Lastly and most amazing was this... I was on the phone with Will, chatting about meeting up tomorrow and I looked to my right... I was this giant mountain next to with half of it being bright orange. I was like, "Dad, did you see that? I wonder what's up with those trees." Within three seconds I figured it out. It was the most welcomed sunset ever... In a day when every waking second was cloud-covered, the sun managed to squeeze in a few minutes for us to enjoy... It literally lit up the entire valley. It was amazing. Reds and oranges everywhere... By chance?