Garden of the Gods

I don't know if the whole family will agree, but for me, today was by far the best of all our days on this tour. We've seen so many pretty places, and I love them all. I cannot say that what we saw today was the most beautiful, because we've seen such varied terraine. The Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore were absolutely gorgeous, in a much different way than the Rockies. I think what made it so wonderful today was a combination of things. The weather has been wonderful. Absolutely gorgeous skies, as you can see by the pictures, and temps that are almost warm. It's the perfect weather for me to want to get outside and walk or climb rocks.

Needless to say, the Garden of the Gods is a remarkably beautiful piece of God's creation. A more appropriate name would be Garden of God. I'm impressed that it's still free admission, and that's a testament to the man who at one time owned it.

We walked for quite some time along the trails. We didn't do alot of rock climbing. You're supposed to have a permit for that. But there were some places where it was not so dangerous and therefore allowed. We ended up spending so much time there that by the time we left, we were all so hungry all we could think of was food! We drove into Manitou Springs and took a look around. Just from inside the car. It was quaint, but eating was more important at the time than window shopping.

One of the things we had originally put on the program was a drive up Pike's Peak. But just driving around Manitou Springs with its steep hills, we decided not to try the Peak. I don't think our little rental car would deal well with that steep of a climb. And the train wasn't running today. So oh well! That and the Flying W will have to wait for a future visit.

DH and I have fallen in love with Colorado Springs. I forsaw this (didn't I say that yesterday?) happening. lol. So we might even try to look into possible jobs in this area. Did I hear some groans on that? Come on. CS is more accessible than where we are now. :) Denver is big and not that far, so it would be just a hop skip and a jump to the airport to pick anyone up. We'll see what happens. :)

And now for the pics. We were all taking pictures, and we have some 270 pictures just of today! Aren't digital cameras great? It makes it fine to be trigger happy.

So enjoy some of these pictures, and tell me which one you like the best. As you can see, I had an even harder time choosing, so here are a bunch.




My favorite Three Musketeers.





Here's Shalom, the super dog! I love that Colorado and South Dakota seem to be very pet friendly. Very unlike where we currently live.



My hunk. :) This was too good not to post.



Here's Pike's Peak off in the distance.



Some rocks in the garden. I didn't stop to look at the actual names of the different formations, so I'm not sure what these are officially called. But they look like praying hands to me, so that's what I've dubbed them, whether that's right or not.




And below, miscelaneous pictures of the Garden.