Escape to the Wild (Day 4 – Majestic)

Well, today turned out to be absolutely beautiful.  The sky was clear, the weather was cool but not cold, and everything looked fresh and rejuvenated after the snow yesterday.  So, we decided this would be the perfect day to go to the Garden of the Gods.

Garden of the Gods is a free park displaying massive, free-standing rock structures in various shapes and formations.  The rocks are composed mostly of white limestone and red sandstone, giving them a stark contrast to the greens and browns of the surrounding area.  Over the years, the rocks have split and fallen (in some places), leaving impossibly-beautiful shapes behind.  The walk around the park on the main trail is only about 1.5 miles, but you can definitely spend several hours here, admiring the formations and gazing out at the surrounding landscape.  Off in the distance, Pikes Peak looms over the park with its snow-capped peak, lending a majesty to the whole area.

Our favorite formations were the “Three Graces” and the “Cathedral Spires.”  The “Three Graces” look like three hands, side-by-side in prayer.  From the side, the slender fingers slope up into the sky with a small gap in between them.  The “small” gap is large enough for two people to walk into it side-by-side.  The “Cathedral Spires” look like the flying buttresses of Notre Dame with thin pillars rising up next to a large, central rock and horizontal rocks connecting the pillars to the larger rock.  The delicacy and grace of these formations is what makes them intriguing.  These are rocks…huge, lumbering rocks…but they somehow manage to be these beautiful works of art without a human’s hand ever touching or shaping them.

We grabbed a quick lunch at Panera, because my wife had a craving, and then headed to Manitou Springs, CO to see the cliff dwellings.  The cliff dwellings are a line of houses cut from and constructed into the cliffs by the Anasazi Indians.  These particular dwellings were apparently moved to this spot over a hundred years ago in order to preserve them.  They’re small, but well-done.  They give you information on each structure, and you can actually climb into and over everything.  It makes it more real when you can actually stand inside and touch the structures.  The Anasazi were very small people, so a lot of the openings were too small for me to climb through, so I just had to stick my head through the opening instead.  We have several pictures of my backside sticking out of the hole, since my wife thought that was funny (we should never give that woman a camera, I swear).  It didn’t take us long to complete this, but that’s okay, because it was late in the day, and they were closing anyway!

For dinner, we did a throwback to our days in Missouri, and went to HuHot Mongolian Grill.  It was just like we remembered, and I went to town in there, eating a plate and a half of food before my wife had even eaten her first!  I’m usually the slowest eater at the table, but not tonight…not tonight…I loves me some HuHot (or as the GPS calls it, “Hu-hoe”)!