Garden of the Gods

The countdown has begun. We leave Colorado in 9 days. This is why we are spending every weekend exploring and playing, we have to try to get in the last few things. Brian works hard all week at work and then comes home and works on his classes. So we really party up the weekend until we are tired and sore. This time we headed to Colorado Springs area and went to the Garden of the Gods. We walked/hiked about six miles exploring this beautiful area. It was a fun adventure with lots of getting lost and then figuring out where we were to getting lost again. The history of the place was really interesting. The land was actually brought by a man for $22 an acre. He let people come and see the place for free. Then right before he died he was in the process of donating the land to Colorado Springs, so his children followed with his plans. However the land was given to the city with specific details: 1) it was to always be free to the public, 2) no structures could be built on the land, and 3) it's name was to be Garden of the Gods.

The visitor center is outside the park and provides the beautiful view above. We stopped to get refreshed and ready for a long time in the park.

All the different structures had different names. I loved the kissing camels.

Can you see them? They are kissing at the top.

Climbing, the first and experimenting one.

Went higher

Exploring more and going much higher

I had to be creative in coming back down.

Climbing high again.

We were surrounded by kids in yellow clothing who were part of a summer program. We thought they were pretty brave to be there with two adults and about 15 or more children.

My H rock or the Siamese twins

We used our monopod a lot and had several people asking us about it. One guy knew what it was called but had never seen one our size. We love that little thing.

Timer on the perfectly placed rock and we got there on foot just before several cars pulled over to get pictures.

Heading back into the park on foot to get to our car.

Balancing Rock

 This rock formation was not originally part of the park. In fact the guy that owned it retired from his job and began to charge people $0.25 for a picture by the rock. He made a lot of money since that was equivalent to $5 for us. Luckily it was bought and made park of the free Garden of the Gods.

 They also had several other rock formations like one that looked like a steamboat but I missed getting a picture of it due to the cars and lack of parking. It was pretty busy as we were leaving the park. We then headed to town to try to find stuff out about Pikes Peak. We were super close to falling into the tourist trap of it but decided it wasn't worth it. But in the exploring we saw this cool cross on the top of the mountain. Since we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast we headed to find some place to eat. We got caught in several down pours and flash flood warning areas but we finally decided to grab some food at Cici's. It was cheap and good. So we enjoyed it. It was a fun adventure and a beautiful place to go and see. Now we only have two more places we want to see. Fingers are crossed that we can get them in this weekend and go see my cousins. We are going to be cramming a lot in and getting packed up, bring on the last 9 days and our last fun adventures.