Bishop's Castle - Colorado

We had plans of staying near the Nekked Lizards and getting to meet them on this night, but after our long travels and all the sightseeing from Denver to Colorado Springs, and the atlas not being 100% correct (imagine that) we ended up way south of them. So we missed our opportunity to see the Royal Gorge. Dennis and I have seen it but Haden hasn’t and we planned on taking him. And those 50-60 miles may not sound like much but trust me on a several thousand mile trip, they feel like a lot. So while we missed the Royal Gorge and some Awesome Lizard hospitality we did see Bishop’s Castle.

We were surprised to find that Bishop Castle was even in our GPS. We had no clue it existed until we stumbled upon it. And it was really cool, but getting onto dusk and me being tired I was too lazy to go back to the car for the proper lens and never got a full shot. So you get to deal with my pieces of it.

This 160’ tall castle has been, and is being, built by one man, Jim Bishop, since 1969. While we were there he was working on the dungeon, which by the drawing we saw, looks like it’s under the wall. The wall will encompass the property and have a walkway on top with towers in the corners.

That’s my little monkey at the top.

Not my monkey here. You can kinda make out the dragon’s head at the peak on the left.

I did find a YouTube video if you’d like to see more of the castle

And finally we made it to camp. We camped in San Isabel about 10,000’ up on the mountains and froze our fricking butts off. To say we got any rest is an overstatement. We had on three layers of clothes, including hoodies with the hoods up, several blankets and yeah, not one wink of sleep. But we managed to get the tents up next to the river before dark and enjoy a campfire before we attempted sleep. Needless to say, we were up and on the road early the next day.

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