Day 5 - Garden of the God(s)

Our first full day in Colorado got off to a slow start as we were all pretty beat from the rapid pace of our drive out here. Also, we heard that you should take the first day slow to avoid altitude sickness...more on that later.

After exploring the campground and fine tuning our itineraries, we took a short drive from Manitou Springs where we were staying to the Garden of the Gods, a beautiful natural area with very cool rock formations,

We took a nice hike, spotted a lot of flora and fauna that were new to us, and watched some serious rock-climbers do their thing. The kids were awed by the natural beauty of the place and renamed it:"Garden of the One True Living God".


Later in the day we drove to down-town Manitou Springs to give the springs a taste (the town made their famous springs accessible to drink by anyone). Unfortunately, I couldn't find a place to park the RV (we didn't have the rental car yet) so we decided to wait a day.


On the way out of town, cruising slowly down the quaint little town's main street...a mule dear with a full rack ran out into the street right in front of the RV! He was heading straight for me...so I had to apply my breaks as hard as possible (slamming breaks is not a good think in an RV as everything flies to the front) chanting "whoa! whoa! whoa!". We both finally stopped with 3 feet to spare, looking each other in the eyes.

Jason, who happened to be thrown to between the two front seats (him not being seated during driving has been a constant issue) let out a "Hi!" and the deer ran away. Interesting....

We ended the day with a trip to the Money Museum in downtown Colorado Springs near what looked to be a college campus. We saw lots of cool money.


Even though we took it easy, I ended up getting a terrible headache due to altitude sickness ...probably the worst I've ever had. I was basically unable to speak or communicate it was so bad. This did not go over well with the rest of the family. :) Thankfully it went away the next morning.

-Dave