Colorado Springs Day 2

Crags Trail Hike

Today started off as an exciting day of exploring a new town. We decided to first drive around to the different parts of town and then head to the mountains for a hike.

We spent two hours driving around town and never really got a good feeling. We enjoyed the downtown area yesterday but in general Colorado Springs feels old, not young and vibrant. We did find a really cool mountain park named Palmer in the middle of town that we drove through and walked around. This park had a ton of hiking, biking, and horse trails. Definitely a cool feature, but everything around the park felt old. One kind of funny thing that we saw in a neighborhood were three deer in the front yard eating newly planted trees and shrubs. I guess this was funny to us, not so much to the homeowner.

Garden of the Gods - National Natural Landmark

We also drove through the Garden of the Gods Park (a registered national natural landmark). This park consists of hiking, biking, and horse trails and can be seen from most areas of the city. The park has red rock formations throughout. It was a neat drive.

We then headed back up into the Rockies. We had wanted to drive up Pikes Peak, a 14,000+ foot granite peak, but the National Forest Service charged $12 per person and we decided not to. We did however drive over to Woodland Park, a city in the mountains. It was a very cool town of approximately 7600 people, surrounded by pine trees, with views of Pikes Peak. This is definitely a place where I could live because it's only a 20 minute drive to downtown Colorado Springs.

Aspen and Blue Spruce

Granite Peak

We also did a five mile hike (Crags Trail) today and it was beautiful! The hike started at 10,000 feet so I was a little nervous but it ended up being perfect. We hiked alongside a creek for the beginning of the hike, then through aspen tree groves, blue spruces, and huge boulder fields and granite peaks. The aspen trees were beautiful because they were already turning yellow. The creek was crystal clear and all that I could think about was how Mati and Jackson would have loved to run through the water and stop for drinks. The pine trees that we saw were awesome. I've never seen so many blue spruce trees together. At the end of the trail we had an incredible view of three lakes in the valley below. The hike was incredible.

As we were finishing up dinner at the campsite tonight a red fox thought he would check us out. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving and sure enough, it was a fox. He ran right through our site and then walked across to another one...apparently the hotdogs and sausages that Scott grilled tonight were appetizing to the fox also.

Overall, today has been kind of a bummer day for Scott. He was very excited, (as excited as he ever gets), when we pulled into town yesterday and today Colorado Springs did not live up to his expectations. The hike was awesome though so thankfully we did that today.

I'm not sure where we're headed tomorrow; I guess we'll see once we stop!