Our RV park, Heart of the Rockies, is truly in the heart of the Rockies. We can see mountains in every direction and many with snow on them. It is quite beautiful here. We are located about 10 miles from Salida which is a popular area for all kinds of outdoor activities for all seasons. At this time the Arkansas River, running through Salida, is raging. Salida is famous for water activities… rafting, kayaking, river rafting and other water activites. In mid-June they have a festival called FibARK, http://www.fibark.com/. At their website you can get a taste of all that goes on during the festival and a description of all the events. It is quite something for this little town. Many of the top whitewater sports stars from around the world will venture here to take on the mighty Arkansas River. We watched some of the frestyle kayakers when we were in town as they practiced for these events. We first saw this freestyle Kayaking when we were in Pagosa Springs and there are pictures of it on the Pagosa Springs blog. The festival is a 5 day event and this town of around 6,000 people grew to who knows how many. These pictures are from the Hooligan exhibition, a freestyle rafting event. The two guys have a raft made of several big rolls of bubble wrap to keep it afloat. The other sort of speaks for itself. Mostly the rafts were made from all sorts of childs swimming pools and water toys. They did not hold up well in this raging water.
Salida has a quite high and steep cone shaped hill adjacent to the town. Tenderfoot Hill has a road to the top named Spiral Drive. We drove up there to see the spectacular view of Salida and the mountains to the west. This road is called Spiral Rd. and it is just that. It spirals around this hill to the top. It is very rough, very narrow and straight down if we should go off the unrestricted side. But such an awesome view.
