Garden of the Gods

I brought Joe to another of my favorite places in Colorado - Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. It's so beautiful to walk around there and just take in all of the formations and the beautiful red colored rocks.

If you look closely you'll see hikers climbing on this rock front. The park puts up leads for people who can register if they're certified and climb throughout the park. Crazy!







There are climbers up here too, but you can't really see them in these pictures.

This is my favorite formation (obviously). This is the kissing camels. If you look in the center where the hole in the rock is, you can make out two camel-like heads that look like they're kissing.
This rock has been teetering here for years (although it's not really teetering, it's very stable) - I have pictures from 10 years ago pretending to hold it up, but Joe didn't want to play along!

Another angle of the kissing camels.

Continental Divide

I took Joe to the Continental Divide/Loveland Pass, which has always been one of my favorite spots within driving distance. We still hadn't been here long enough to do any real hiking, but we had fun wandering around and checking out a local "lake" and the wild flowers. We're definitely getting used to the altitude now...

We went a little ways up this path - maybe next year we can really do some hiking. This is a favorite spot for back country skiers in the winter.
What an amazing view. I love that you can actually see cloud shaddows here - a lot different than the perpetual shaddows of Ohio!

Our car is somewhere down there - we made it quite a ways, but the altitude kicked in.

You have to have your picture with THE sign. Mine is from the days before digital, so it's only in my album. There are people waiting to get a chance to take a picture with this sign.
This sign is a more recent addition to the scenery and a bit unnerving. It's aimed more at back country skiers in winter but still a little socking at first. Yes folks, it says blasting and long range weaponry. Hhhmmm...
The views up here are breathtaking!

Joe and the little "lake".

I love the wild flowers up here!


Whew! We made it! What a fun day!!

Random weather in August

Out of nowhere we had a pretty severe hail storm in August this year. The hail was the size of nickles and it just piled up. Needless to say, Sonya was quite worried

By the time the storm was done, the hail was probably an inch or so deep.

Because of the wind, it stacked up so high in the front that it was even with our porch - above the steps!
Our side walk from the driveway looked more like a river.