Pikes Peak

The morning of our anniversary Jared and I decided to drive to Pikes Peak. It’s a pretty well know 14er in Colorado.  We had breakfast and then we were off; only we didn’t quite know where we were going.We put Pikes Peak into the GPS.  It told us to go to a visitor center in Colorado Springs.  That’s not where we wanted to go.  We could see the mountain… I decided to try finding it on my phone.  It was REALLY slow to load.  We must have been sitting in a dead spot or something. While we were waiting Jared decided to pull out the map.  Remember these?  They’re books.  They have maps of all fifty states with labeled roads and things like that. With all the technology these days I wonder how many people still use an atlas?  Anyways, as luck would have it, one of our kids had gotten a hold of this atlas and ripped the state of Colorado out of the book.  Great, huh?  Well we finally figured out which direction to go, so we started driving.We decided to pick up some lunch and bring it with us.  We’ve heard that things are a little expensive at the top of Pikes Peak.  Of course it is.  It’s a tourist attraction. Check out the view from this house?  Wouldn’t that be nice?I think this was supposed to be a garage sale, although I cannot confirm it since I didn’t actually see any signs.

 

We made it into Pikes National Park and stopped at a little gift shopish place.  They had a little mining stand.  It’s for those with a lot of patience.  I didn’t have time for that kind of thing, so we kept going.

Isn’t that view just breathtaking?We saw this sign quite often.  It meant…. some really crazy switchbacks!  The road to the top of Pikes Peak was full of these switchbacks.  I think it took us about an hour and a half to get to the top.  It was 20 miles from the bottom to the top. Nuts,right?Maybe it could have gone a little faster if we didn’t stop at places like this. We made it to the top where I believe the temperature was in the 40s.  The higher you go the colder it gets.  I was pulling out my Marilyn Monroe pose.  Why not?  It was nice and breezy.  Now unless you live at high altitude you won’t understand how amazing it is to see baked goods that look like this.This donut was perfect. Now, here we live a mile (5,280ft) above sea level.  When we first moved here everything I baked sunk in the middle or went completely flat.  So to see a donut at 14,110 ft is incredible!The fudge was pretty tempting too.  Here’s the view from the top of Pikes Peak.  It was so pretty.  I would have stayed longer, but it was cold.On our way back down here is another switchback.  I don’t believe that this drive is for people who get car sick easily.  It’s very windy. You really have to watch where you are driving or you could drive right off a cliff and it is steep!  There were not many guardrails. We stopped here to eat our lunch.  It was a little warmer than the top of the mountain.

People could fish and hang out at this reservoir. it’s very calming and relaxing.  So from the top of Pikes Peak to the bottom there is about a 30 degrees difference in temperature.  Pretty crazy huh?  It doesn’t really matter when you go, but when you do be sure to bring a sweater or coat!