Our First Trip to Colorado: Day 2

8/4/13

We were awake EARLY, between hunger (airport food just didn't hold us), and being early risers on the East Coast. That wait for restaurants to open for breakfast was a challenge, though we were thrilled to see the sun was shining after the previous night's deluge.

But the restaurants did eventually open, and we were at Over Easy, about a block from The Mining Exchange, within minutes of it opening. We were quite pleased with the variety, the service, and the food at Over Easy. And it was a nice short walk from the hotel. Once we had sufficiently filled up on pancakes, we headed to 7-11 for some bottles of water, and then found the car and we were off to Garden of the Gods.

Wow! is about all I can say. Neither one of us had ever seen red rock formations before, so this was just incredible, and we both walked around saying "Wow" and "Incredible" throughout the park. We walked a bit on the trails near the main parking area, and we also did the Siamese Twins Trail. 

By then it was getting quite hot, and us East Coasters were hungry, so we decided to move on to our next stop. The next stop was the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. This zoo is built on a mountain, so it was quite the drive over there, despite it being close by. Our first stop when we got there was food. Based on comments on TripAdvisor, we tried Overlook, and we were very pleased. Overlook, well, overlooks what seems like all of Colorado. The view was phenomenal. 

Our pizzas were fantastic, and reasonably priced for zoo food. And they used real ingredients! At a zoo! 

After eating, we checked out the different animal exhibits. We were VERY impressed with this zoo. Beautiful setting and very well done exhibits. We would be happy to return.

By mid-afternoon it was clouding over, so we decided it might be time for an indoor attraction. We had already learned not to underestimate CO weather! So we headed for the Ghost Town Museum. The woman taking money for admission was very friendly. We were definitely surprised by the quantity of stuff in this museum, but none of the exhibits seemed like things we hadn't seen in places outside of CO. Heck, there was a Concord Stage Coach as one of their big things. That was invented in NH! Interesting, but not a must-do. We were glad we had had a coupon!

By this point, it was late afternoon, so we headed back to the hotel to rest, and figure out where we were going for dinner. About the time we figured out where we would be eating, the fire alarm started blaring in the hotel. We broke every rule I tell the kids I work with in school and grabbed our jackets, camera bags, etc, and headed outside. We waited around for a few minutes, and then decided it was time to find dinner. Since it was raining, and we were thinking about going back to Garden of the Gods that evening, we went to the garage to get the car, and drove to Phantom Brewing Company, just a couple blocks away. Service was good, food was good, and Nick loved the beer selection. After dinner, it was still raining, so we decided to call it a night. We returned to the hotel, where everyone had just been cleared to return to the rooms. We never did find out what happened, but there was no smoke smell, and no water damage in our room, so we didn't really care. We were exhausted.