Colorado Springs...Ghost Town Museum edition

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Our next sighting in Colorado Springs was the Ghost Town Museum.  An interesting little place that preserves the life of the wild wild west.  I honestly didn't know what to expect when we walked in...but, it was definitely interesting.  My favorite part, without a doubt, was this shooting game...coming from a law enforcement background I was so excited when I saw it.  There was several little targets to hit and each one triggered something different.  Like the donkey in the picture would kick it's leg when you hit one of them.  You had a certain amount of ammo to try and hit every target.  Of course I did it, so the sign told me I was even better than Annie Oakley...thank you, thank you ::bow::


It was kind've crazy to see how life was back then...especially because it was not all that long ago.  For instance, this picture of what life was like if you were imprisoned...

And this picture of newspapers that are actually from the time  of Lincoln's assassination, and Garfield's assassination... 

on the right a girls tricycle; on the left a boys

1903 Cadillac 1 cylinder

Life has changed so much since then.

And the adventure continues...

Stay tuned...

Colorado...Garden of the Gods edition

From Seven Falls we continued our outdoor activities and headed straight to our next sight, also in Colorado Springs (this town is pretty happenin'!)...the Garden of the Gods, a pretty amazing garden of natural rocks.

I know, you're probably thinking, 'rocks..that doesn't sound so awesome'....well, these aren't the type of rocks you get from the backyard.  They're more like, holy crap how does such a beautiful thing form so naturally kind of rocks.  It really is a garden like nothing else I've ever seen.  And I really love the fact that it's named a garden...normally you associate gardens with flowers, but they're not really needed for it to be a garden.  I think it's a fitting name for a beautiful place.

the kissing camels

I love this picture...because you can actually see the sun rays:

So, as beautiful as the garden was, Jas and I couldn't help but notice something.  It was a pretty nice day, not too cold, but not exactly warm.  The wind made it a little colder, but when you were in the sun it helped.  But, we clearly were one of the few who were effected by the weather.  As you can see from the picture, I have a long sleeve shirt, with a hoodie over it, and a hat on.  We were slightly bundled, and yet we saw people walking around in shorts, or t-shirts.  It made us think, well maybe this is like "summer" for them.  And it also made us feel like we had a sign on our back that read "we're not from 'round these parts".  But that's ok...I don't think anyone really thought we were locals anyway!  We walked around for quite a while.  Trying to match the different names for the rocks that were posted on signs all around to the actual rocks we were looking at.  But, the signs didn't have that little dot with the "You Are Here" memo.  I mean, why wouldn't you include that!  How do we know where WE are?!  So, we figured out a few names (the easy ones), like for the kissing camels rock, for the white rock (I mean that's pretty self explanatory)...but some of the others we weren't so sure about, we changed our mind at pretty much every sign we stopped to look at.  Ah well...we tried. Another beautiful sighting.

And the adventure continues...

Stay tuned...

Colorado...Seven Falls edition

From Kansas we were on to Colorado...or Colorful Colorado!  Though I would have loved to take advantage of the snow and tried out snow boarding, it's a little difficult to bring suitable clothes and gear for cold weather activities when you're moving to Hawaii.

Anyway, after looking through some brochures from a rest stop (those things come in handy sometimes), we decided we would head to Colorado Springs.  Once we got there we happened upon this absolutely amazing diner.  Our waitress was way past nice...and the pancakes were nearly bigger than my head!  No really...look:

After our meal, and yes, the pancakes did beat us...in our defense though we both ate more than the pancake (we should've listened to the waitress when she said we could share one!), we were beyond full...but, we decided to head over to Seven Falls and climb 224 steps.  Some might say we should've done those two things in reverse (Jas did say this actually, silly girl), but that really wouldn't be living on the edge now would it!  

Let me say that some of the signs entering the falls do not exactly leave you with the most comforting feelings...But the steps ended up being not bad at all, well, they took a bit of a bigger toll on Jas but don't tell her I told you.  Unfortunately, since it's winter, only the back steps were open, so after we came back down we had to take the elevator up to see the other side...but we made it, and for our efforts the gift shop rewarded us with these handy dandy patches:

Also, since it's winter, parts of the falls were iced over.  It kind of made for interesting sites, though I would like to see them during the peak season.  Especially at night, since their lit up during the warmer months.  But it was really great to enjoy the outdoors, as a lot of our trip had been spent indoors.  After taking on the steps I was nice and warmed up and ready to go running or something, but we had more to see...

the stairs we climbed are in the back

And the adventure continues...

Stay tuned...