Colorado Springs - Days 1 and 2

We spent two days and two nights in CO Springs, before we started on the two-day journey back home.

We spent both days with M's aunt Mary, uncle Mark, and cousins Paul and Laura. Mary insisted on making lunch and dinner both days. We had excellent meals. I hate having people go through the ordeal of cooking vegan meals for us, though. It's such an effort for a non-veg to learn about the foods and ingredients that are often unfamiliar and all of the various 'rules' just seems like a lot to have someone deal with. We had a wonderful visit and enjoyed our time and activities with them.

The first day we went to Garden of the Gods--another place I've been to before but didn't appreciate nearly enough then. Luciana spotted a fawn. Then we drove and walked through the private grounds of some religious group. There's a castle, a coffee shop, gorgeous houses--it's a huge and palatial estate! It was beautiful. I was having some altitude sickness periodically. I was surprised by that!

Mary's back yard is a haven for the mule deer, who like to hang out under her deck when it's hot. That puts them right in front of the windows, so we got to watch them close up for quite a long time. They were beautiful!

On the second day there, we went to Pike's Peak. We took a cog railway up to the top of the mountain. It was a little over 14,000' high. It was really difficult to breathe! When I came as a child, we drove up. I'm SO glad we didn't drive up this time. The train was perfect. Definitely the way to go! We spotted lots of cute little golden whistling marmots and some bighorn sheep.

L was still looking for bears and mountain lions, but never did spot any.

L kept looking at her junior ranger book and would say she was looking for bi-horn sheep. We would tell her no, 'bighorn', but she would again say, 'bi-horn'. She explained that she was reading the first syllable as, 'bigh' and the second as 'horn'. She thought that 'bigh' was pronounced like 'high' and 'sigh'. Since bi- means two and that since the sheep did have two horns, it should be pronounced 'bi-horn'. She reluctantly changed her pronounciation to 'big-horn'.

We took some pics, walked around, had a snack, and used the bathroom up at the top. The toilet paper holders had these strange stickers on them.

At dinner time, M stayed with his family, while L and I went to meet my friend Carla and her family for dinner at P.F. Chang's. It was so fun having dinner with her and her family. I wish we had more time together! We chatted over a long, leisurely dinner and then back at the lobby of our hotel. It was late and we all had to get up early. We definitely need more time to hang out!