We left Las Vegas, NM and went to Colorado Springs. We stayed at the USAF Academy FAMCamp. There were quite a few RVers there, though the weather hadn't warm up all that much.
We went over to Manitou Springs a couple of times. The town is famous for its hot springs and the fact that it sits at the base of Pikes Peak. One day we walked around town had lunch at the European Cafe and I had borscht (beet soup) for the first time. I found it to be surprisingly good. The next day we went back, rode the Cog Railway to the top of Pikes Peak and when we got back down we had lunch at The Heart of Jerusalem Cafe, excellent Mediterranean food.
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| Manitou Springs |
The Manitou Springs Incline, also known as the Manitou Incline or simply the Incline, is a popular hiking trail rising above Manitou Springs, Colorado, near Colorado Springs. The trail is the remains of a former 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge[1] funicular railway whose tracks washed out during a rock slide in 1990. The Incline is famous for its sweeping views and steep grade, as steep as 68% in places,[2] making it a fitness challenge for locals in the Colorado Springs area. The incline gains over 2,000 feet (610 m) of elevation in less than one mile.
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| Manitou Incline |
They say there are something like 2024 steps to the top. I was excited at the thought of walking to the top and I had planned to walk up it right after
our Cog rail ride. The first look at the "incline" was a bit daunting, but I was game. I walked up 200 steps and got to thinking, "I am not prepared for this. I don't have any water, nor snacks to tide me over." So I returned to the bottom. That sounded like a good excuse to me. Maybe the next time I'm in the area, I'll give it a try.
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| Balancing Rock-Garden of the Gods (Glo beside rock) |
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| Garden of the Gods |
We also drove through the "Garden of the Gods." An amazing area of beautiful red rock formations. It reminded me in some ways of Sedona, AZ. If you are ever in the Colorado Springs area, you MUST see visit this park. It holds a special place in my heart, because my sister, Marsha, and I visited here on a trip west in 1996.
Helen Hunt Jackson wrote of the park, "You wind among rocks of every conceivable and inconceivable shape and size... all bright red, all motionless and silent, with a strange look of having been just stopped and held back in the very climax of some supernatural catastrophe."[6]
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| Pikes Peak |
At the top of Pikes Peak the temperature was 20 degrees with a wind chill of 9 degrees. To say the least we didn't spend a great deal of time outside. The views were magnificent. They say you can see for 300 miles.
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| USAF Academy Chapel |
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| Ken & Sue Moloney |
On our ride up to Pikes Peak we met a neat couple, Ken & Sue Moloney. We happened to meet up with them purely by accident the next day at the USAF Academy
Chapel. They are full-time
RVers like us who used to live in Tempe, AZ for many years and Ken served some time in the Air Force. We hope to see them again in our travels.
Weather was magnificent the whole time we were in Colorado; cool in the mornings warming up in the afternoons. However the morning that we were leaving there was frost on the ground it was 29° outside. Our water pipes were frozen. Though it didn't take long to fix it, I was thinking we need to get used to that for a little while anyway.
We decided we needed to get on the road toward Moorcroft, WY, because the weather forecast had winter storms coming in and we wanted to be sure we were at our destination and off the roads before the snow arrived.
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