Wednesday, Garden of the Gods, CO

Wow, are we happy! While we are missing Deb and Nancy and feel so bad that Nancy is still in the howling winds, we are very glad to be where the trees aren't bending sideways!!

We arrived in Colorado Springs to a rainy day which has turned into a beautiful evening. The forecast is for a high of 70 and mostly sunny tomorrow. The drive over today was easy. After we arrived and looked at the bad weather moving across Kansas and realized that we are literally a two minute drive from Garden of the Gods and about five minutes from Manitou Springs we've decided to stay a second night.

Julie, Kristin and I were at the Garden of the Gods on a trip we took to Colorado years ago.

It is even more beautiful than I remembered. The name of the Garden came about in the 1800's when two businessmen were exploring the property and one said he thought it would make a great beer garden, the other said "it's not a beer garden, it's a garden of God".

We drove through today and found out we can take the dogs anywhere in the park.

After the Garden we went into Manitou Springs. Luanne realized she had been there a couple of years ago, she hadn't gone anywhere except to the cog railway to go up Pike's Peak. We walked all over town, shopping a little and looking at the old houses. I bought a small loom in Taos and we found a yarn shop here where I bought two hanks of beautiful blue yarn. The idea is to make a scarf, we'll see how it turns out!

Dinner was at an outstanding Italian restaurant, not only was it great tonight but will be good again tomorrow.

Tomorrow we are going to walk the trails in the morning. They also have mountain biking trails an Luanne is going to ride in the afternoon. I'm going to continue my book, The Glass Room, which I like a lot.

The pictures today are of the Garden of the Gods with two pictures I took in Manitou Springs.

The knife holder, merchandised as "Ex", was one of the weirder things I've seen anywhere, pretty sick actually but I couldn't resist a picture. The second was on a T shirt I would have gotten for Nancy which has her Indian name on it. I had to settle for a picture because the shop was closed. The last picture is posted for Deb, a picture of a painting in a gallery, taken because we know how Deb loves her margaritas!