Cogs and Springs

Colorado Springs was our home for a couple of days.  We stayed at the Garden of the Gods RV Park.  It is in a nice location to see some sites.  We slept in on Saturday and decided to go see Pike's Peak. Pike's Peak is a couple of minutes from the campsite and took us through Manitou Springs.  We were impressed with the little town and decided to come back and walk around later.  You can ride up Pike's Peak on a cog railway.  It is like a train except there is a cog system in the middle of the track to assist with the climb.  A regular train can go up a 10% grade, but a cog can go up a 25% grade.  Pike's Peak is named for Zebulon Pike, an explorer who never made it all the way up the mountain because when he got 1/2 way up, he was hip high in snow and had to turn around.  He wrote about it in his journal and it became known as his peak.  

The journey up was pretty steep.  You can see the tree line is straight while we're at a good angle.  We had to stop suddenly once and found out why they don't want us walking around.  We saw quite a few waterfalls and rock formations.  At one point, we saw an area called Inspiration Point.  It is called that because a college professor named Katherine Lee Bates from New England went up to Pike's Peak and afterwords while in Colorado Springs wrote a poem that became the "America the Beautiful".  There is also a road that you can drive your car up, but it is very steep. The peak is 14,115 feet high - our highest to date.  Oxygen was a bit different there.  Some report feeling light headed.  We managed to have our lunch there and get some nice pictures.  We had to be sure to be on the train on-time, otherwise we would become hikers.  On our way down, we picked up three firefighters.  They reported they found a campfire that was left and still burning, but were mostly putting out hotspots from the storm the night before.

We safely made it down the mountain and went into Manitou Springs, as did everyone else.  There wasn't a parking spot to be found.  We decided to come back later and do something else.  We went to Camping World to find a solution for our awning.  There was one in  Fountain, CO.  We got there and they were having a big sale, so we got to see a lot of campers. Caris was drooling over them. The ones she liked were in the $200,000 and $300,000 range, or course.  We went to the store and found awning tape.  We had multiple things on the table as an option to visit next, but decided on going to the garden of the gods, a rock formation very close to our campground.  The rocks were formed in an unusual way and jut up high in the sky.  They truly were beautiful.  We went to the visitor's center which explained how they were formed and told a lot about the area.  We saw a movie about them that was a "time travel" back to show how they were formed geologically.  It was campy, but fun.  

It was getting late, so we decided to go back to the campground to get dinner around and try to fix the awning.  Mitch, Caris and Carolyn worked on the awning while Dan got some burgers on the grill.  We got the awning fixed and used it to eat under for dinner.  It seemed to work well and provided some much needed shade.  Temperatures were running in the 90s most of the day.  

After dinner, Caris, Carolyn and Dan went back to Manitou Springs.  We found a parking place and walked around.  It was fun.  We found a store that sold just rubber ducks, an arcade and the like. One restaurant that looked pretty cool was a fondue restaurant.  We looked at the menu and it looked delicious.  We stopped at the candy shop/ice cream shop and tried some fancy chocolates and got a funnel cake.  It was a nice way to wind down..  We made a stop at the grocery store and made it back.  All in all, it was a great day.

Driving through Manitou Springs

 Garden of the gods

Views from the Cog Railway

 Our Train

 Formerly Used for maintenance, etc.

 A monument to the song America the Beautiful - inspired by Pike's Peak