Bishop’s Castle sadness…

If I ever hear of anybody coming even close to traveling through SE Colorado, you’ll see me freak out and tell them that they have to find and experience Bishop’s Castle.  This just happened a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting with a friend who was getting ready to leave on vacation.

Now, it’s painfully obvious that Jim Bishop, the creator of this castle, is totally crazy.  He’s been building this castle by himself, by hand, in his free time on nights and weekends since 1969.  Crazy, right?  Not necessarily in a bad way, just really crazy.

Well, my friend went and took his family and some other friends.  Jim Bishop was out there.  This is not rare, he was there the first time I saw the castle with my sister.  They talked a little.  crazy talk.  But harmless.  Unfortunately, my friend said that while he was there and climbing to the top of one of the towers, he heard this yelling and screaming and didn’t know what was up.  Come to find out that somebody from my friend’s group said something that set mr. bishop off.  The topic of this volume-turned-to-11 ranting was blatantly racist.  So, crazy and racist. My friend and I talked about how disappointing it is to find out that whatever is in this guy to take on such a magnificent and whimsical project would be driven by hate.

This makes me sad, because I’ll still probably tell people that they need to seek out the castle, I’ll have to include a disclaimer about its creator.