Same night we picked up a rental car and drove to Colorado Springs (my new GPS unit came in very handy and within the first two days of using it I started to wonder how was I ever able to travel without one before. Funny thing is that when Derrick gave it to me as our 4th year anniversary gift that same morning, my first question - outloud!- was 'why do I need it?').
Anyway, we got to Colorado Springs, found a decent place to spend the night and the next day were ready to explore the area. The first thing we did was drove to the Pike's Peak. The elevation went up to 13K+ and the temperature drastically dropped from 65F+ in the valley to 32F on the peak. The last couple of miles of a 19- mile- road going up was not even opened due to the weather (ice) but from where we were the views were spectacular.
Next stop was the Wines of Colorado, a nice wine shop/ local eatery. Quick lunch, couple of glasses of wine and we drove to Garden of Gods Park; however, the weather conditions again weren’t the best (strong wind and rain), so we only drove through the park, took several pictures between the rain showers and went to U.S. Olympic Training Center instead where we took a short tour to see the facilities where the athletes from all over the world train before the Olympics. Our guide, a gymnast, loved using 'cool', 'awesome', 'sweet', and 'insane' in his presentational speech. At some point I counted how many times he used them but within 5 minute frame of at least 10 'awesome' and 9 'cool' I gave up. The guy was clearly too excited about an opportunity to train there. Though I must admit that spending at least 8 hours a day in the gym does not sound very appealing to me.
Next day, Saturday, we got up early and drove towards Blanca, to visit the Colorado Alligator Farm. Let me tell you, that place was incredible. They rescue various lizards and such from the dessert and place them in their facility where they take good care of those animals. First, we were greeted by Turtle Precious and Turtle named Turtle 2 (which was just rescued from the dessert)- they both were approximately 6-7 years old and were not done growing (as they live close to 100 years!) The place was full of alligators, some crocodiles, ostriches, peacocks, tarantulas, pythons, and other animals that I would not be ok to run into in the dessert.
Afterwards, we drove to the Great Sand Dunes National Park. Finally! It has been one of the National Parks that I’ve wanted to visit for the last 4-5 years though after the hike up on the dunes I started to question why. Needless to say I have a whole new appreciation for the Alchemist. We've experienced what sand storms are all about and now very well know the taste of the sand. We were lucky we were visiting in May so instead of the heat (which we all know it can get really hot in the dessert) we dealt with elevation- and it was no fun!
Next couple of days were spent sightseeing, taking a train in the gorge, visiting Estes Park and some other places. Unfortunately, the fog did not allow us to visit Rocky Mountains but hey, there is always next time.
