Another early morning. Aside from my own 2am potty ritual, Ellen needed an escort at 4:20am followed by Phoebe at 5am. I gave it until 5:40am to fall asleep, but then decided that to make our plan for today work, I needed to get up and get breakfast started. I packed my sleeping bag and pillow, changed, and then got to work on breakfast. It was cloudy and 50 degrees when I got out of the tent. It looked like rain, but it never did. Jada got the girls to work putting away everything in the tent while the oatmeal was cooking. I had breakfast done by 6:45am, and Jada was done with the tent internals. The girls helped me take down the tent. Phoebe folded up the tent poles while Ellen helped me get the tent packed down and folded. We were all packed and ready to go by 7:40am. I’m concerned about the box. The rear lip is sagging from a combination of over stuffing, the Subaru’s tailgate sitting under it all the time, and the way I store it in the garage resting on the tail. However, it still closed and latched. That’s the most important thing.
On the road, only 15 miles out of Rocky Mountain National Park, we saw a black bear on off the side of the road in a small meadow in Roosevelt National Forest. So now both of the girls have gotten to see a bear too. Shortly thereafter, I had to slam on my brakes to avoid nailing a fawn that sprinted across the road in front of me. The rest of the trip south was uneventful. We retraced our tracks back through Denver. There were tons of cyclists on Highway 36 between Lyons and Boulder. I would have thought it was an event, but there were no numbers on any of them. It is just a really popular road to ride. I’ve read about it in my bicycle magazines. I even saw some of the crew from one of them (Velonews) all kitted out riding in a small pack. They’re headquartered in Boulder, but I didn’t want to take the side trip to find their offices on an early Saturday morning when they obviously weren’t open.
We reached our primary target of Pike’s Peak named after Zebulon Pike who didn’t even complete his climb up due to weather and lack of provisions. He died on the mountain. This is also the mountain that inspired the song “America the Beautiful”. The Native Americans simply called it Sun Mountain. At 14110 feet above sea level, it is only ranked 31st on the list of Colorado’s Fourteen-ers which is what they are calling the peaks above, anyone? anyone? That’s right. 14000 feet. We started our ascent at the Pike’s Peak tollway at 11am after paying $34 for our car ($12/ adult, $5/ child under 16). There are signs at the entrance letting you know that you need at least a half tank of gas to start the climb, and to use your low gears. The round trip drive time is estimated at 2 hours for the 19 miles up and back without stops. We only stopped once on the way up at the Crystal Reservoir Visitor Center for a potty break. The traffic wasn’t too bad. I was on my own for most of the way up which was nice because we were all really tense. It’s an uncomfortable road to drive, and it didn’t help matters that Phoebe was sitting in the back seat whimpering. The Subaru did admirably, but I was in first and second gear the whole way up. The switch backs forced me into first, but I could get it up to speed again pretty well after. Towards the top, it was a struggle to maintain 20mph in 2nd. So that’s not too bad for as fully loaded as we were. In hind site, it may have been better to go to the hotel first, but a room wouldn’t have been ready for us anyway before noon. Just after hitting the alpine tundra, we drove into a cloud. It’s an eerie feeling. I had already turned off the radio, and they tell you not to run AC on the drive. I had diverted all power to engines, so that’s all I was listening too. The wind wasn’t even all that bad.
We summited at 12pm just in time for lunch. We were still in a cloud, but we posed for our picture in front of the sign at the lodge in the 47 degree temp (72 when we left). Then we took our contraband (GASP! our own food) into the snack bar and sat in a booth to eat our lunch. I bought 2 of the doughnuts spread with fudge made in special cookers on top of the mountain for $6.27. I didn’t get the full story about why the doughnuts were so special though they were good. We got a little break in the clouds just before we were ready to go, so we could see across the cloud we were above and look down on birds flying around. The ground from this altitude looks almost sideways. But maybe that’s just the lack of oxygen which you really could feel. I definitely felt sluggish, and I know Jada was affected too. The drive down was just as tense if not more because by 1pm when we headed down, there were a lot of people driving down too. I seemed to be the most cautious of the bunch, but I was also the most fully loaded. So I pulled over to let people pass whenever possible staying in 1st gear most of the time. We saw a yellow bellied marmot on the side of the road looking like it wanted to cross or beg for food. It’s hard to tell which. Between 13 and 12 thousand feet, we started coming out of the clouds and every switchback was staring out over the landscape far, far below. The landmarks on the road have cheery names like Bottomless Pit, Devil’s Playground, Double Cut, and Ragged Edge. There’s also a cog railway that can take you up to the summit and the Barr Trail which you can hike. I’m not sure where it starts exactly, but it’s a 13 mile hike up. We saw lots of people who had hiked up in the shelter/gift shop at the top, and we saw them along the trail in the alpine tundra on the way back down later.
We completed our decent by 2pm and went straight to Garden of the Gods. I was tempted to stop by the cave dwellings, but I didn’t want to cram more into the day than I already was. Garden of the Gods is gorgeous. All the stories you’ve heard are true. Plus, on a Saturday afternoon when it’s sunny and 80 degrees it is the place to be. We drove all the way through the park past the Balancing Rock and up Ridge Road to Juniper Way Loop to the visitor center at the east edge of the park. We picked up a map and stopped in the gift shop for an armload of post cards and my sticker. Then I suggested that we check into the hotel, eat dinner, and then come back in the early evening to finish exploring. Our hotel was only 9 miles from the park, so it didn’t take long to get there. I had to unpack the sleeping bags because Ellen suddenly realized she didn’t have her bear. Sure enough, she had packed it up in her sleeping bag, so disaster averted, we went to eat at Chili’s which was close by the hotel. There we planned out what we would see in the park and how. We also identified another National Park called Florissant Fossil NP which can be made to be on the way to Grand Junction for tomorrow. It’s only 40 miles from Colorado Springs, so why not?
We were back in the Garden of the Gods, which is a city park, not a national park, by 6pm. We filled our camelbacks in the visiter center, and then trolled for a place to park in the park. On our second lap of Juniper Way Loop, we were able to park in pull off #5 on the west side of the central garden. We hiked on part of the Palmer Trail which goes around the park over to the Siamese Twins Trail since that rock formation is only accessible via the trail. The girls really enjoyed scrambling over rocks and hiking on the paths. Even Phoebe didn’t complain about being tired the entire time(she did, however, complain about the horse poop, but really, who wouldn’t?). We then joined the Scotsman Trail to head back towards the central garden area where the rock formations that are most photographed from the visitor center are such as Kissing Camels and the Cathedral Spires. It was on the Scotsman trail that we heard an accident happen up on the road. We’re hoping it was just a fender bender, but the police had the road blocked off after we finally got back to the car. We then drove down to Balancing Rock hoping that it had calmed down enough to find a place to park, but it was still very crowded with people climbing all over it. Jada took a picture of it on the move. Since it was 8pm already, we called it a night, showered the girls back at the hotel, and put them to bed. They fell asleep almost immediately. Jada and I both took showers too. It’s glorious to be clean again.