Exploring Colorado

Got up early yesterday and drove down to see Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs. Definitely want to go again and spend more time hiking and looking around. I can still feel how the altitude change affects my stamina, though. Plus a storm was moving in and I thought it best to move along (there ended up being golf-ball sized hail, and I saw snow in a couple places on the way home).

Anyway, it was really cool to see climbers up on the rocks, and the climate in the early part of the day was just perfect. I hiked around for more than two hours with all my camera equipment on my back, and barely broke a sweat. Just awesome.

The red rocks reminded me of Big Thunder Mountain at Disney, and I realized that today I'm exploring the places I was only pretending to be at before. Really exciting... and less crowded!

See an album with more images here. The man and woman climbers you see in a couple of the photos, I was able to run into later on when they were on the ground. They're from New Zealand, and I was able to get their email so I could send them the photos.