Current Location: Colorado Springs KOA, Colorado Springs, Colorado

This morning, we had breakfast in the trailer then got together water bottles and drinks to stay hydrated in this thin atmosphere and headed out the door to Manitou Springs. It’s a pretty nice little town up on the hill and the location of the cog railway that goes up to Pikes Peak. We drove up to figure out where we were going later for the railway ride, then headed back down into town and found a parking space.

Seems most businesses in Manitou Springs open at 10:00, 11:00 or noon. Since we were there around 9:30, we walked around for a while, checking out what various shops were around and reading various historical markers. As we strolled up and down the street, various places starting opening up so we browsed a few shops. We picked up t-shirts for our quilt and a few other souvenirs. Around 11:00, we headed back to the truck and up the hill for our cog railway ride.

Once parked, we picked up our tickets and headed down to the snack bar to get a bite to eat. We had pretty good sandwiches brought in from a local cafe. We sat on a bench and ate lunch while waiting for our railway car to arrive. We boarded a little before noon and headed up the mountains to Pikes Peak. We took pictures, shopped the gift shop, grabbed a snack for the ride back down and rode to the bottom. The ride each way is a little over an hour. By the time we got back to the bottom, it was a little after 3.

We hopped in the truck and drove around a bit and ended up driving the loops at the Garden of the Gods. We stopped here and there and took pictures. We also, of course, stopped at the gift shop (which was huge) and found a few items for gifts, as well as post cards.

After Garden of the Gods, we drove aimlessly in the general direction of Colorado Springs and found a Hobby Lobby. Val remembered she needed a couple things from there, so we stopped in. Malcolm walked next door to Office Depot to pick up something we needed from there.

While in Hobby Lobby, we heard from our friends Tracey and Roger Ellmers and figured out a place to meet for dinner. We had a great Mexican meal at Jose Muldoons. We chatted and caught up for a while before saying our goodbyes after pictures on the front porch of the restaurant.

Once we got back to the trailer, it was time to start putting things away and prepare for travel. Tomorrow, we head generally east across I-70 and will probably end up somewhere in Kansas tomorrow evening.

Here are a bunch of pictures from today.