Garden of the Gods

On Saturday it was time to head down to Colorado Springs which is about 90 miles / 145km to the south. On Monday it's the Presidents Day, a federal holiday in honor of George Washington and therefore the roads were quite packed with people heading out to spend the long weekend somewhere.

Our destination was the Garden of the Gods, a public park with some pretty fancy rock formations. As we got closer it was pretty noticeable how much less snow there was on the ground compared to Louisville until at some point the ground was almost completely bare.

I actually really wanted to go to the adjacent Pike's Peak which is perhaps the most famous of the 54 Colorado "fourteeners", i.e. mountains higher than 14,000 feet (4,267 m). When we got closer to our destination we noticed that unfortunately that area was covered by a cloud even though otherwise it was clear and sunny. It would've been really cold up there as well so I'll have to try that again during the spring of the summer. That mountain is famous mostly because you can actually drive all the way to the top or take a nice cog railway if you just want to relax.

Pike's Peak is hidden somewhere around there

...or there

 

Ari Vatanen driving to the top of Pike's Peak in 1988

The Garden of the Gods? I'll just let these pictures tell the story. Click to enlarge.

This is actually from Wikipedia. We drove past it and I couldn't take a pic since I was behind the wheel

After that we had a surprisingly cheap lunch at the famous hotel Broadmoor where of course there were valets who parked and picked up your car for you.

After the return trip it was time to actually walk around a bit at the little town centre of Louisville which seems to be quite a nice place to live.