Flipping through a Colorado hiking, touring, etc. book our friends, Mike and Rachel, let us borrow, we found something promising...Castlewood Canyon. It turned a little chilly toward the end of last week, fall-like temperatures, so we dressed and packed accordingly. What we didn't really anticipate was the rain...and the wind that accompanied the rain! But it was fun, nonetheless. Just check out these pictures of the canyon...
This canyon is just north of Colorado Springs, about a 20-25 minute drive, east of the Front Range mountains. We found out that a canyon like this is not normally found outside the mountain range. We walked around the top looking into the canyon and got absolutely soaked. We were dressed for cool weather, but not wet weather.
The canyon was very cool to see from above, but even more beautiful when we walked through it. And, since we were looking for more opportunities for water torture, we decided to take the path we found to go down into said canyon.
The Path Down
The Canyon Floor
Exhilaration in the awesomeness of the canyon floor.
The Grand Canyon it's not...but, it was still really cool!
We then decided to take the off-road called Rampart Range Road home. Now, we've taken Rampart Range from Colorado Springs out west. But apparently it starts northeast of the Springs, so we though it'd be cool to take home. And, we're glad we did because we ran into a little wildlife, and a really cool looking boulder:
Oh, and I almost forgot...we found our dream house. It's in the middle of the remote mountains, ooo - and also has a great fireplace (by the looks of it, the fireplace will keep the entire house warm).
The road was what we expected it to be. No pavement, lots of washboards, lots of trees. But, as we started looking at the clock we wondered about how long this stretch would be. Consulting the aforementioned book we discovered it was almost 60-miles! More of a day-trip we figured. We started this off-road a bit too late for a day-trip, so we decided to turn around.
To finish up our day, when we got home we decided to cook up my mom's awesome white chicken chili. It didn't take too long and it was a-maze-ing! Just like I had remembered from home. And, Tiffany loved it, too! There was, and still is, lots of leftovers. Yum-Yum!
Until next time...
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I forgot to add: Sunday we woke up to some great sunny weather, complete with blue skies (we've been told that there are over 300 sunny days/per year in Colorado Springs). On the drive to church we saw what Tiffany had predicted the day before: SNOW ON THE PEAK!! With all the clouds up on the mountains, Tiffany figured that the rain we were experiencing would be snow up on the mountains. You wouldn't believe how beautiful it looked. No camera can really, fully capture it's beauty. That's why I didn't take a picture and post it here. Not really! I actually went out to take a picture later on Sunday, but to my dismay the clouds made a victory tour on the mountains and thus took away my photo-op. I promise we'll take some good ones of the Pikes Peak.
Pikes Peak is pretty cool. Being a native St. Louisan, born and raised (unlike my 4 older siblings), I can truly say that I think the Peak is much cooler than the Gateway Arch. This could be blasphemous to some, but it's true. The Arch isn't a far 2nd to the Peak, really. The only thing the Peak has on the Arch is that it changes appearance and that we can see it everywhere in the city. When we lived in the city of St. Louis, we thought it was cool that we'd see the Arch twice a day - on the way to and from work. But, after the first month or so we had become so accustomed to seeing it that it almost wasn't there anymore. With the Peak, one day it has snow, another day no snow, another day it's covered by clouds, another day the sunset brings new colors behind the Peak, etc. Thus, the Peak captures our attention in its ever-changing beauty.
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