Castlewood Canyon near Franktown, Colorado is such a little surprise as you travel south of Parker on Hwy 83. Everything is fairly flat and then all of sudden you go over this bridge and a canyon underneath. We stumbled across this Colorado State Park quite a few years ago while traveling to Colorado Springs so when we moved to the area south of Denver we knew we wanted to get back there.

With all that’s been going on the last 3 years and settling into our new area we had only gone a couple of times and mostly in the Fall. This Spring we really wanted to get out and explore the area state parks more and this was high on the list. There are so many trails with all ranges of difficulty. Some are paved and very easy to get around. Others are more difficult with a lot of rocks to climb over, streams to cross, and long distances to walk. The views are absolutely amazing! With all the rain we have been getting everything was so lush and green and on this trail there was so much moss growing which to me seemed very unlike the very dry climate Colorado typically has.

We only did a small portion of the East Canyon Trail (which takes you under the bridge) because of rain rolling in but we will definitely be doing more of this trail in the future. We loved that this trail was marked by little stacks of rocks so you had to find the next stack to lead your way. The view under the bridge was really neat! I think the next trail we want to do here is the Castlewood Dam Trail where you can get right up to the dam that broke in 1933.

Here are a few pics from our hike!