WHY CASTLE ROCK?

The weather was warm and sunny for the first time this summer on one of our days off from work. We chose to hike up towards the historic landmark along I-25 in the town of Castle Rock. Castle Rock is a town about 7 miles north of our campground where we go to shop for groceries and other necessities. The classic view of this landmark was taken from the downtown area and overlooks the entire town.  Obvious why the town is named Castle Rock.

This was the view of the Castle Rock from the parking lot of Rock Park. The local hiking booklet called the hike we were about to take "difficult".

Could "difficult" have been because of this warning sign at the trailhead?

More likely it was labeled "difficult" because of the many places where you had to climb a series of steep steps. Paul is shown on one of these sets of steps. We were serenaded by many birds all during our hike.

The views as we ascended towards the top were breathtaking. We never tire of looking towards the south to snow covered Pikes Peak, about 30 miles away. With all the rain we have had in Larkspur at 6600 feet above sea level, Pikes Peak (over 14,000 feet above sea level) has gotten lots of snow. The town of Castle Rock is in the foreground.

Even though most of the rocks were a dull gray in color, we found this colorful purple rock roughly cut from what or how we don't know.

This large boulder was along the trail. You can see its enormity with Paul (6' 1" tall) standing alongside it. We wondered how many thousands or millions of years ago these other rocks fell from the top of Castle Rock.

As we approached the top of the trail near the base of the Castle Rock itself, we could easily see the enormity of the this famous landmark. Look how steep the sides are. Around a bend Paul is dwarfed by the side of Castle Rock.

We walked around the base of Castle Rock admiring the many cliff swallows who constantly flew in and out of their nests in the sides of the rock. Ann was able to photograph one of these swift flying birds as it sat next to its nest. Many similar holes were found all around the Castle Rock.

A local hiker told us about a falcon nest above the whitewash portion of the rock face. But, despite how hard we looked, we never did see the falcon.

As we came around the backside of the Castle Rock, we could see just how hard the wind was blowing on top when we looked upwards towards the American flag on a flagpole at the summit.

As we returned down the trail to the parking lot, we spotted this pine tree with new growth. Spring must be about ready to turn into summer, finally.

We thoroughly enjoyed our hike in sunshine with warm temperatures reaching the 60's. Hopefully, the cool rainy weather in May will give way to lots of sunshine and more warm days as the calendar turns to June.

We took a last photo of Castle Rock as we were exiting the park, and you can see the rain clouds beginning to roll in.  Yes, it rained again a little while later.  As we were preparing dinner later in the afternoon, the roof of the motorhome was pelted by rain and more hail. This was the 3rd day in a row we had hail, apparently a common occurrence here in the foothills of the Rockies in late springtime.

While this hike was labeled "difficult", we compared it to what was called "moderate" in Grand Teton National Park when we first began our workamping adventures six summers ago.