Colorado Springs, Colorado

Making the best of things during this crisis!

Our view. Oh, how I miss Santa Fe already!

Our original plans were to be in Denver this week, staying in a beautiful state park, but due to the Covid -19 pandemic, those plans got tossed out the window.  Instead, we had to scramble around and find another park that was not only open in Colorado during this time but also had good cell coverage.  This was not an easy task.  In the end, we ended up paying a much higher price for the week and in a horrible park to boot!

Garden of the Gods

 

Since we were here for the week, I set out to find things to explore.  Our first trip was to the Garden of the Gods.  We have been to the Garden of the Gods in Illinois which was made up of gray stone, but here the park was made up of mostly deep-red and pink stones.  The stones were deposited horizontally but have now been tilted vertically and faulted into "fins" by the forces caused by the uplifting of the Rocky Mountains and Pikes Peak.

To our surprise, the park was pretty crowded and it was also an unseasonably hot day for Colorado, so we ended up only walking about for a bit and called it a day.

Pikes Peak

   Our next outing was to Pikes Peak. Wow! Just wow!!  It was definitely the drive of a lifetime.  

Pikes Peak is the highest summit of the southern part of the Rocky Mountains.  At the top, you are at 14,115 feet above sea level.  The summit is higher than any point in the United States east of its longitude.

To say it was a scary ride in a dually is an understatement.  Then to have to pass biker after biker that were making the 19-mile trek up the mountain was insane.

At the top is a huge construction site at the moment due to a new $50 million Summit Complex being built.  The is scheduled to open sometime in 2021.  As we stood there looking over Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Kansas it began to snow.  So worth the white knuckle hairpin turns. 

Folks, pictures and video can not do this justice, this is a trip everyone should take!