Climbing Pike's Peak

Well, in the car, of course. :)

This morning DH woke me up with a surprise. He got up earlier than everyone else, he said, and started to think that if we left Colorado Springs without going up the Peak, we'd regret it for the rest of our lives. To be sure, the prospect of going up the Peak got everyone hopping out of bed in record time.

I really thought the climb would be terribly steep. It was a little in some places, but it would level off then climb a bit again. All in all, it wasn't bad at all, and we made it up and back down again in one piece. Obviously, since I'm posting! lol.

They only let us go up part of the way today, I guess because higher up the conditions weren't safe. But that's all right. We got to go up about 13 miles, and truly, that was good enough for us. We stopped at a visitor's center at the 13 mile mark and bought a few souvenirs, and got quite a history lesson from the man who was running the shop. Let me tell you, what inspiration for a story! He told us about a young couple who lived there back in the 1870s or 80s (can't remember which). The wife was only a teenager. But they lived there for three years and sold lumber to the rail road company. One of the rooms in the building is part of the original cabin, and my mind started to conjure up all sorts of images of what life might have been like for a couple like that.

I'm not sure what happened, but alot of the pictures we took look a little strange. It's not exactly blurred, but there's a brightness around anything light colored that makes it look almost like there's an aura around it. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed that our pictures weren't clearer, like the others we've taken so far. But we still got a few good shots. And we always have our memories. It was just gorgeous. And for me, at least, even the fact that the oxygen level was only half what we would get down below, making it hard to breathe, it was hard to start heading back down. It was a nice surprise to be able to do that, though, and I am forever grateful to my DH. He truly is a dear husband. :)

You can't see it too well in the small picture, but on the left is the visitor's center that at one time was the home of the young couple I mentioned. I know in those days it was even harder...they had to carry all their supplies up there by mules...but still. What a view. What inspiration. Oh wait. I'm sure that poor woman, even if she had dreamed of being a writer, was too tired after doing all her chores every day to even think of anything creative in the evenings. It was still pretty. :)


Trees and snow on the way up the mountain. But I guess that's pretty obvious, huh? **G**

Here I am with DH. Proof we actually went up and didn't just pay someone for the pictures. lol.



And here's the view of the valley below. This isn't from all the way up top. There were too many trees up there to get this view! But at the point we could see down below, we stopped and took some pics.





We're heading for Kansas City, MO to visit with my uncle. I seriously doubt he has wireless at his house, so I most likely won't be posting anything tomorrow. Don't know that I'll have any interesting pictures anyway. :) So I'll hope to be back on Monday.