CO2011
Bummer. We've been here a week already and it's flying by way too fast. So sad!! You know, our trips here keep extending longer and longer each time....
Anyway, Friday was our Colorado Springs day. As usual, we got late start but planned to do to cog railway, which is basically a train car that takes you to the top of Pike's Peak.
On the drive over... kinda weird/different. We're only used to seeing the Denver-Boulder drive, so this one was unique!
Then we rolled into the Pike's Peak area, Manitou, which was filled with all sorts of cutesy Western-y shops that draw tourists.
We had no idea that the cog railway would be that crazy popular, so we didn't make it onto the train we'd wanted to. For $35 a pop, it didn't really seem worth doing, and especially not because it would take over three hours for the round trip (I don't have the attention span for this!). Instead, we headed over to Old Colorado City, which is another cutesy area, lots of restaurants and unique shops like the one below. We got a pizza and walked around for a few minutes.
Then, one of the main events... run at Garden of the Gods! This place is so beautiful - it is a large park that has tons of natural red rock formations, donated to the City of Colorado Springs as long as it remains free forever. The pictures should say it all, but hopefully you can get an idea of what running here would be like:
Ben and his Altras
This scenery was so gorgeous, and the formations were so enormous, these pictures don't even do them justice. They looked completely fake.
I always knew that climbing up door frames as a kid would be a useful skill!
There was yet another didgeridoo player a few feet away from where we took this photo. Is this a Colorado thing?!
There were definitely some pretty dark storm clouds brewing... some foreshadowing!
So as we were about a half mile from the car finishing our run, we started to see some crazy lightning out in the distance. Next on the agenda was heading to the Northern part of town to see my friend Kyle. We worked together at Woodward, so it was a nice lil' reunion. He's like the big bro I never had!
On the way over, we saw this!! Full double rainbows. It was storming like crazy but still extremely sunny, producing what you see below. Two rainbows in a week? I ask again: is this a sign??
The other half:
Kyle has an a-mazing family and house (and golden retriever too!). We had dinner with them, caught up, and played with his kids for a while. Good times. Their house is on a large, extremely wooded lot, and they've even seen black bear wander up in their backyard. It's like night and day compared to what was going on in Rockford! Anyway, I love that between Ben and I, we already have quite a few buddies out West. :)
We made it an early night and headed back to Denver to get some sleep for an early Saturday morning!
That pretty much sums up our Friday, the end of a full week in Colorado. It's going by too fast!!
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