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| Curtis Cline and his children, Margaret, Gene, and C. F. |
The picture to the left is not very clear, and a bit out of focus. However, the memory is clear in my mind. My family had been traveling about a week when this picture was taken. As I remember it, we had stopped to get something to drink at an interesting looking western-style store. Inside the store, Gene was attracted to some native made musical instruments. You know, the ones that native American's played. I remember looking at some small and medium-sized drums that were decorated nicely. It was a store with all the tourist type items for sale. I remember buying a Pepsi, and a snack and the others got much the same, but I don't know if we bought anything else or not. I think my Mom bought a cedar-lined keepsake box. I remember the store had the large Hunter ceiling fans that made it cool inside the store, so we looked a little longer than usual.
We did not see the Indian fountain until we came out of the store. The native American Indian seemed huge to a five-year-old girl. He was bending on his knees with a large bowl just above the large water basin. Out of the middle of the container, a fast-moving body of water was gushing out. First, C. F. was interested in going over to take a good look, then I wanted to see it too. A local man was standing there and told us the water was from a fresh mountain-fed spring. When my Dad hear that, he had to try the water. Then Gene and C. F. tasted the water. As I was the youngest, I had to wait until they had all tasted the water before I got a drink. None of them said very much until I started to drink the water. Then they all started laughing, saying it tasted terrible. My Dad said it felt like Alka-Seltzer. I liked the water, so I asked them what they meant because it tasted good to me. They all three laughed at me and said I was crazy. Later, I learned it was an artesian well, which is often under pressure between two rock beds. The pressure makes the water "sparkle" like seltzer water. I liked it then, and I still drink it today, and from time to time remember the first time I drank sparkling water was in Colorado with my family.
We all crawled back into the station wagon and headed off for the Royal Gorge Bridge. Between 1929 and 2003, it was the world's highest suspension bridge. My Dad was always intrigued by the "biggest and the best" of things. Once we got to the massive bridge, most of us were intimidated by its size and thousand-foot drop from the bridge to get out of the station wagon. In 1931, a 3 ft narrow gauge incline railway was built to the bottom of the gorge through a narrow cleft just west of the north end of the bridge. We all thought it was a bit too risky for us to take that railway to the bottom. My Dad insisted that we drive over the Royal Gorge Bridge. We then returned over it to the lovely park area to eat our supper. It was a fantastic sight to see. I will always remember how it swayed when we drove over it, and I was thrilled to get back to the starting side.
At one time, my parents had a brown scrapbook full of photographs from the trip. The photos were inserted into the little black triangular tabs that held them in place. There were several dozen photos in the album and now all I can find are seven, with this being one of those seven. This is just another memory of my family trip to Colorado in 1949.
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