Day 10 - Garden of the Gods

We had three nights in Colorado Springs which means we had two full days. There was a lot of stuff we wanted to see here, but we were starting to pick up on the not-so- subtle clues from the girls that they didn’t want to drive around and look at stuff all day. At one point on Saturday when we were going up Pikes Peak we pointed at something and Caroline responded with “who cares, it’s the same view we’ve been seeing all trip”.

So, we decided that we would keep the site seeing to a minimum and only go see Garden of the Gods, and then spend time at the pool. We left for Garden of the Gods around 10:00am. It is literally a 2-3 minute drive from our campground. But we quickly realized that parking would be an issue. In fact, the only parking spots we could find were far away from the main viewing spots. It was getting warm out and we didn’t think hiking a long way to the interesting part of the site would be a good idea, so we opted to come back after dinner.

We used the time we had in the morning to head over to a playground downtown that we had driven past on Friday evening. The girls seemed to like it, since it had some newer, and different equipment, but it was starting to get hot so we headed back to the campground. We ate lunch and then all got ready for the pool.

We had the pool all to ourselves for at least a half an hour which was blast. You can play music, do goofy stuff, and watch Dad show you how to do a real cannonball!

We must have spent nearly two hours at the pool. We got out and headed back for showers. It quickly became apparent that the two hours at the pool took a major toll on the girls, because they all looked wiped out. This was surprising because they often spend 2+ hours at the pool back home and then carry on with their day. Caroline and Natalie lounged around inside while Julia, Sam, Nolan and I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles outside. Somehow we acquired a DVD of four or five old-school cartoon episodes. Watching them is an awesome trip back in time for Allyson and I.

To simplify dinner we ordered a pizza. A perk of camping in a residential area is that there was a Domino's 0.25 miles away. Once we ate, we started loading up to go back to Garden of the Gods. The complaining and protesting was growing in intensity, but they weren’t getting out of it. I mean, we were two minutes away and we were staying at a “resort” of the same name. We had to go.

Several kids fell asleep on the very short car ride. We had to do two laps around the site to finally get a parking spot, but we got there and it did not disappoint.

Garden of the Gods is really just a bunch of old rock formations, but because of their size, shape, and color they have this magical aura about them. It is really something to see. We spent about an hour just walking around and taking it all in.

Samantha decided she was too tired to walk so dad got to pull double duty lugging children around, but at least these two are light.

We left the Garden of the Gods a little before sunset and went back to the motorhome to get the girls ready for bed. Allyson and I had some packing to do because we were leaving for New Mexico early the next morning. We also had to discuss plans for the remainder of the trip. We still have several stops planned but the girls are starting to say they miss home. This evening they laid it on pretty thick, but we think that is due to them being so tired. Allyson and I put together several options for how we could get home quicker….none of them are great though. We are over 22 hours of driving away from home and we have a baby with us. So we can’t just drive straight back home. Also, we want to hit our last few stops. For now we will stick to our original plan and see how Monday goes.

I'll leave you all with this lovely family photo below that a woman was nice enough to take for us. Sam decided she wasn't going to have any part of it. So just in case anyone reads this blog and thinks "boy, that looks easy" just know that it isn't and there are plenty of moments just like this one.

That’s all for now. If you made it this far, thanks for reading!