Colorado Springs

We woke up and took a little jog. I say little because I only lasted one and a half loops. Mostly because my calves were aching from the dunes. Yikes – if you want a cave workout go walk on a sand dune. You will “feel the burn” for days. The elevation is a bit higher here than we are used to at 7-8 thousand. So I blame it on that and not the fact that I am out of shape. Brad ran a little longer than I did but he too said he could feel the elevation difference. I did get to run inside and pour a glass of water and I was able to hide behind a tree and wait for him to run up then hold the water our like he was running a marathon. We soon got busy with the day. Maxx and Carroll let us borrow a map and Maxx led the way for us to get to Pikes Peak and off we went. Pikes Peak is different than I remember, mostly because I was young and I thought the mountain reached on forever. It does gain 7.000 ft in elevation, which is close to forever especially through the eyes of me at age 10. When I was younger we went in through the caretaker entrance and explored the south entrance that is mostly untouched by humans. This time we went the tourist route, which is definitely something to see but nothing like going into the wild as we had done years ago. It is $10 dollars a person – pretty steep for driving up a steep road. Luckily Maxx has connections and we just cruised through the gate. My car began to overheat slightly by the second mile. This was pretty scary because we still had many miles and more importantly lots of elevation gain. We pulled over and let the engine cool every so often just to be safe. This car, although she is an awesome car, still has to last us the rest of the trip. I don’t want to walk home from California. We slowly crept up the mountain. We stopped at Crystal Lake and watched a few people that were fishing. We passed the tree line and noticed the air getting thinner and cooler. It was at least twenty degrees cooler than it had been at the base of the mountain. I found myself wanting a jacket. We got out of the car at each of the stops we made and walked around a little bit. Nearer to the top all you saw for trees were hearty trees mostly pines. There were a lot of cars but the views were pretty awesome. As Maxx said you can see clear to Kansas. We didn’t make it all the way to the top in fear of damaging my engine. Next time we will go all the way up for sure. Brad and I are just cautious sometimes. We did drive around the Colorado Springs area afterward to get a feel for it. We like it here but it is so much bigger than when Dad grew up here so like all things it is always changing. After walking/driving around we went back to Maxx and Carroll’s cookout. Where we were greeted with good food and awesome people. Rick (Maxx’s brother) is about to go to Alaska so it was fun to talk about someone else’s trip and plans for a change. It sounds awesome and I hope he is safe but has so much fun. There were jalapeno’s wrapped with cheese and bacon and I thought I could handle it. I couldn’t. Brad had to finish it and I had to eat bread. Needless to say I left those alone. I tried Elk sausage and thought it was very good. The people here put salsa on all chips. Not tortilla but Doritos. I thought that was weird and did not try it. Most of the food had a little spice to it, in a good way just different from what we are used to. Brad loved it. We made two heaping plates and sat back for a while. There were two small boys running around. They were brothers and they were really cute. They had water guns and they thought they were dinosaurs. Cookouts are always more fun when there are different generations there. The mother of the two was pregnant again, this time with a girl Gracie Lee. Of course this made us miss our little Grace and we wish we could be there to celebrate the fourth of July with you all. We hear she is starting to pull herself up. Soon she is going to start running around and getting into trouble. The temperature cooled down and after the cookout we watched a few fireworks, which has become custom and called it a day. Sadly we have to leave. I wish reservations were not necessary because I would not mind hanging out for a week, but we have to move on and I am sure we will love the next place and want to stay there for a week as well. There is just so much more around here that I want to see, maybe the next trip out. Thanks to Maxx and Carroll for opening up you home and hearts for us. We had a really nice time. Just before we left Maxx blessed our car, us and our journey.