Colorado Springs

Elizabeth and I had a wonderful trip to Colorado Springs this past week. I was there for a conference Monday through Wednesday, but we flew out on Saturday to enjoy a bit more time away. It was the longest we have ever left Hannah and Noah, so as you can imagine we were quite nervous. It was a much needed break though.

I took 227 pictures while we were out there. That's the positive and negative side about digital. It's nice to be able to take as many pictures as you want without having to worry about how much you are spending on film, but sometimes you end up with more pictures than you know what to do with. I've shared quite a few pictures below, but here's the entire gallery if you'd like to see more.

If I haven't ever mentioned it before, I LOVE the Rocky Mountains! I have been in love with the mountains ever since my first trip out to Philmont when I was a young scout. Colorado Springs was beautiful with lots to do. The resort (The Broadmoor) was amazing! Each of us enjoyed a spa treatment while we were there. I had a great massage and Elizabeth had some weird thing with spices that included a massage. (Hers wasn't really that weird, I just made fun of her a lot.)

The weather was fabulous. It was in the 70's and almost 80 on Monday and Tuesday. Of course, they were predicting up to 10 inches of snow on Wednesday night right after we left.

You may have also heard about a couple of wildfires that happened while we were out there. One of the fires killed three people and destroyed several homes. We could see the smoke from the resort on Tuesday evening.

Probably my favorite thing of the whole trip was our ride on the Manitou and Pike's Peak Cog Railway that took us up Pike's Peak. Unfortunately, the wind was howling and we couldn't make it to the summit, but we did make it up to about 12,500 feet and had an amazing view.

Here are some pictures from the trip up the mountain.





This next picture was taken on one of the steepest parts of the ascent. The trees you see are growing straight up and down, so you can compare that with the angle of the window to get an idea of how steep it was. The train was long enough, that when combined with the grade, the front of the train was over 3 stories higher than the back of the train! Pretty cool. That's Colorado Springs down on the plains below.


Once we crossed the timber line we started seeing a lot more snow. Their snow "plow" which works more like a snow blower was clearing the way for us.


Talk about a lot of snow!


The mountain range in the distance in this next picture of the mountains of the Continental Divide. They are over 100 miles away!



Another cool place that we visited is called the Garden of the Gods. It's a bunch of really cool rock formations that seem to grow out of nowhere. It was very cool!




Here's some shots I took around the resort.