Noodlings & Natterings from the Edge: Time Out for Old-Time Fun

At the confluence of I-70 to Denver, state highway 6, Hwy 82 to Aspen, and a crazy quilt of turns leading to the heart of town sits a crush of national hotel chains and a schizophrenic assortment of international one-offs: Rosi’s Little Bavaria Restaurant, its wooden building trimmed like an alpine hotel; Fiesta Guadalajara, offering adobe archways and Mexican fare; and a Sioux Villa Curio shop (are things you buy there called Siouxvenirs?).

Welcome to Hotel Row of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a town that nestles in a triangular basin of Rocky Mountain gorges along the Colorado River. My RV park is a few miles back down Hwy 6, and last night I had only enough energy to wander to this oasis and treat myself to a margarita and enchilada dinner after my escapade with the trailer tires.

Today I’ve returned to this area, not for the world’s largest hot springs pool at Glenwood Hot Springs (think public swimming pool magnified by 1,000—urg), nor for the Yampah Vapor Caves (geothermal caverns used by the Ute Indians, a spa I’d like to try sometime), nor for passage into town for the historical, educational, and retail offerings of Glenwood Springs.

Nope. Today I’m out for unadulterated tourism and kidlike goofiness at the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park.

This place is like Disneyland when it opened in 1955. Small, intimate, and—by today’s standards of thrill-a-nanosecond amusements—old-time hokey-pokey fun with a western theme.

A 32-foot climbing wall (yes I did). A mechanical bull (no I didn’t). Laser tag, shooting gallery, a human maze (“Fort WhereAmI”), 4D theater, bungee trampolines. Two thrill rides: Swing Shot, which sends me screeching and swinging over a cliff high above Colorado River whitewater rafters, and Canyon Flyer, a spit-drying, seat-of-the-pants, “wahoo!”-inducing downhill coaster whose speed I (somewhat) controlled with a personal hand brake. Gift shop and one restaurant, which overlooks the Rockies, the Colorado, and the town of Glenwood Springs.

A park map reminiscent of old Disneyland.

The frontier lives on.

I made it to the top on the easy side, and was almost too afraid to let go to come down. But it sure was fun when I did!

A 600-plus-foot dropoff.

Riding in front was scarier. I felt like I was going to fall out right about here...

Each to her own car for the alpine coaster.

Away we go!

Survive one high-speed turn...and, OMG, there’s another!

Getting to the park requires a scenic, 10-minute gondola ride to the top of the mountain. (When the park opened ten years ago, only buses on dusty roads could get you there.)

Up, up, up...

Looking west. My RV park is way off there in the distance, where the Colorado bends around the hill.

Looking south. Town of Glenwood Springs.

The highlight of the park is its core business—a cavern tour that opened in the late 1800s as the Fairy Caves, and shut down in 1917 because of the war. For years the caverns languished and ultimately died because they had been exposed to open air. In 1992, a dedicated couple got access to the caves and found a tall, long, 8" wide crevice (dubbed “jam crack”) that led them to undiscovered and pristine caverns, now known as The Barn and King’s Row. They bought development rights to make these treasures available to the public.

The difference was that they poured a lot of money and technology into resuscitating the old caves, protecting the new ones they had found, and keeping the mountain as pristine as possible even as they’ve expanded the park over the years. Thus the cave tour entrances are sealed with double-door airlocks to keep exterior air exchange to a minimum, and sensors are everywhere to monitor the health of the formations. Even some of the older caves have started to generate new minerals now that exterior exposure has been closed off.

Water drips from revived mineral formation in the original caves.

In The Barn...a space as big as, well, a barn.

In King’s Row, named after a lumpy formation that looks like chess pieces (visible on the "horizon," left of center).

The gondola going up the hillside, and the alpine coaster going down it, travel alongside mature trees that were there before construction. Rather than scrape the hillside for installation of the lift, as is done at most ski resorts, they brought in all the gondola supports and equipment by helicopter. The result is a park that, at only ten years old, looks like it’s been here for decades.

After taking the cavern tour, lunch, and a couple of amusements, I hung around the park for a while, mostly people-watching and waiting for the Canyon Coaster to come online (it was under maintenance when I arrived and well worth the wait).

For five minutes, I watched a father clamber after his daughter through a 20x20x10-foot open-air wooden "Speleobox" made to simulate a spelunking experience. Think 3-dimensional labyrinth that you crawl through using your elbows. The little girl was all turned around in it and couldn’t find her way out through all the levels, holes, twists, and dead-ends. The father had wiggled in after her and was talking her through it, while I, from the outside, circled the box and helped talk the father through to his daughter.

The wife came up beside me, also watching the progress. “This is such a wonderful place,” she said, waving a hand to encompass the park. “So simple and relaxed. You don’t get many ways like this to spend the day anymore.”