August 15, 2013

• Epic Road Trip, Day 6, part 2

  An interesting tidbit about the Garden of the Gods park, is that when it was "discovered" one dude said, "Yo, we gotta make this place into a beer garden, man" (not a direct quote, but close) and his friend scoffed, "Beer garden? No, this is a garden for the gods." The sober guy won the argument and the other guy went and drowned his loss at a local pub. You can read the more accurate and less entertaining account in Wikipedia under "Garden of the Gods" if you want.

  Meanwhile, I took pictures.

      

  Got to watch some climbers up close (with zoom, that is). The guy had some spectacular muscles. Not that I noticed.

      

  Quin found it first!

  But Kendrah felt the need to climb into the crack with him.

  Then Quin waited her out, staying in his curved little spot till I could get another picture of him. Pretty sure he's the cutest boy, ever.

   

  I thought it was so cool to see how the rocks were formed, curving gracefully here, jagged cliffs there, balanced rocks seemingly about to topple, sections of tafoni randomly placed here and there, trees growing from sheer rock faces. It was all really fun to look at.

   

   Oh, there's the camels again, just above dead center.

  

  I wasn't paying much attention then, but I've since learned that this formation is called the Three Graces.

  

  I love this picture, the way the clouds look, the reds and greens and just the weird formations.

  Meanwhile, back to normal, my kids both felt the need to cram themselves into tiny cracks in the rocks. There were warning signs about rocks being unstable. My kids were fine where they were, but a man holding a small child slipped on some loose rocks and fell crashing down. He did a great job of protecting the kid and falling so no one got hurt, so we were able to laugh quietly to ourselves about it.

   

  Another photo I fell in love with.

  

  Quin climbed up high, while Kendrah held up the Balanced Rock with other kids climbing on it.

     

  The Balanced Rock was interesting. I think of balanced as teetering, but it was really solid and no matter how many people climbed on it, it didn't wiggle. Despite that, I still got the heebie jeebies when the kids were under it.

  

  Another interesting thing is that the balanced rock is on a shelf of rock that is balanced by pillars. Quin hid under the pillars while I got a shot of the people milling about.

     

  Kendrah finally got a moment to herself on the shelf on Balanced Rock.

   

  And I got a picture of a cool tree trunk.

  

  After this visit to the Garden of the Gods, we took a scenic drive to other parts of Colorado Springs, which I will post pictures of next time.

   

   

   

   

   

   

  • 3:01 pm
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