Our First Trip to Colorado: Day 3

8/5/13

We were up EARLY this morning. Well, early by CO standards;) We had tickets for the 8am train up Pike's Peak, so breakfast was cereal bars in the room, and we were on the road about 6:30. The drive to the train station was quick, with few cars on the road at that hour. It was easy to find parking at that hour, and I would go early for just that reason. We picked up our tickets and explored the gift shop a bit before the train arrived.

The train departed at 8, and it was an awesome experience. HIGHLY recommend it. The trip to the top really let me see just why they call them the Rocky Mountains. 

The view at the top was mind blowing. The other perk to taking the early train was the clear skies. It was chilly at the summit, even for New Englanders. I was VERY glad I had dressed in layers. 

After a bunch of picture taking, we headed into the store and “cafe” for the “world famous doughnuts”. Those doughnuts are totally worth their reputation! The train left the top of the mountain about 45 minutes after we got to the summit. Because we were the first train of the day (no delays on the track) we had gotten about an extra 15 minutes at the summit. Honestly, I was ready at the half hour mark to return to the bottom. After that, I was totally feeling the altitude. Thankfully, that feeling wore off as we made our descent, and I was able to do more picture taking. 

We returned to the Manitou Springs station about 11:30 am and hit the gift store before driving into town in search of lunch. Seeing the parking nightmare that the area around the station had become made us very happy to have taken the early train.

Lunch was at the Stagecoach Inn, which had a neat atmosphere, but average food. I think I had a burger. The better half has since learned to read TA reviews! When we finished lunch, we walked around town a bit, peeking into stores and enjoying some custard at Culvers.

After this, we headed for Cave of the Winds, which we loved. Cave of the Winds is a cave that is open for guided tours. To reach it, you drive up a mountain. While waiting for our tour, we enjoyed the peace of the rocking chairs on the deck of the visitor’s center, overlooking Williams Canyon. 

We had to wait about half an hour for our tour, but it was worth it. Again, this was a very different experience for us, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. 

The clouds started building again at the end of the tour, so we called it a day. Dinner tonight was at Jack Quinns Irish Pub, again about a block from the hotel, and again, an enjoyable meal. Great food, great service, fun atmosphere. Nick loved the late happy hours in CO. They seemed to last until 6 everywhere, which is quite a bit later than most places at home. Jack Quinns was one of those places.

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.

Our First Trip to Colorado: Day 1

Saturday 8/3/13

After a morning of running around, we started the trip with a 2pm EST flight from Manchester to Denver. When we got on the plane in Manchester they informed us that the flight normally takes about 4 hours, but it would take 4 1/2 that day because of a 150 knot headwind. They were wrong. We ended up circling Denver for over an hour because of severe thunderstorms in every quadrant of the city resulting in a hold on all flights. By the time we got on the ground, we'd been in the air for over 5 1/2 hours and we were DONE. Too bad we still had to drive to CO Springs.

We got our luggage (quite the cluster, since when the hold was lifted they started dropping planes out of the sky left and right), ate, and hopped on a bus for Dollar. During the bus ride (ALL rental car companies at DEN are a shuttle ride away from the airport), we quickly realized that the break in the storm was going to be short lived, and all we could do was hope we didn’t see any weather too wild.

I had been hesitant to rent from Dollar, because they get absolutely SLAMMED for their DEN branch on TripAdvisor, but I’d gotten a FANTASTIC deal, so we rolled with it. Despite the complaints I'd read on TA, we had a very positive, low pressure experience. But I think the guy was more concerned with the possibility of a tornado than with trying to upsell us. He wanted to get out of work early. I was concerned about the possibility of a tornado too. That's one CO thing this East Coaster didn't care to see, especially since the well marked tornado “shelters” were back in the airport.

We had a choice between a Jeep or a Chevy Captiva. We threw the bags in the back of the Chevy and jumped in the car. The drive to CO Springs was harrowing, as the torrential rains started literally the second we made it into the rental car. I thought about staying put, but with water rising around us, and a clear lighter sky to the south, my instinct was to get to higher ground. Thankfully, the rain settled down a bit by Aurora, but the storm chased us to CO Springs. The drive ended up taking almost 2 1/2 hours between weather and accident related traffic, which seemed like an eternity, being that we were on East Coast time, and had already spent so long traveling.

Since we knew what the storm held, and we knew it was right on our heels, we decided to park the car before checking into the Wyndham Grand Mining Exchange, in Colorado Springs. We had decided before the trip not to pay for valet ($18/day), and had mapped out where to park the car. We found a spot in the Kiowa Street Parking Garage, and hauled our luggage the block to the hotel. We were greeted by friendly doormen, and a smiling girl at the front desk. She was quick to inform us that we had received a complimentary upgrade to a junior suite. We were excited, as we had a 30% discount on a regular room to begin with, so we couldn't believe the deal we were getting, but we had trouble showing it. We really were exhausted. It was closing in on midnight to our bodies. Thankfully, we were the only ones checking in, and the process was very quick. It was raining before we left the front desk. Pretty soon we were in our room, 322. At that point, we woke up a bit. We just couldn't get over how beautiful the room was, or how little we were paying for it. 

Eventually, after a lot of picture taking, we settled down to rest up for a busy day of sight-seeing.

Our First Trip to Colorado: Pretrip

Our first trip to Colorado: Pretrip

Decided to move a trip report that I wrote on Trip Advisor to here. In moving it over, I’ve added pictures and more details.

Cast of Characters:

Me: 26 at the time of the trip. My goal is to go to all 50 states before I turn 50. This trip allowed for crossing a new-to-me state off the list.

Nick: Also 26 at the time of the trip. He also had never been to Colorado. It was because of him that this trip happened.

This trip really began in April 2013. Nick and I took our first trip to Disney World together over April vacation. At the end of that trip, Nick was able to take a bump on the way home, resulting in a substantial amount of Southwest credit. With that credit, it became possible for a flying vacation for summer vacation. After a week or so of considering our options, we decided to cross Colorado off my never been there list. We booked nonstops between Manchester and Denver, marveling at how much cheaper the nonstops were than those with connections (there was a reason, as we would find out), and then booked 4 nights in Colorado Springs, followed by 2 nights in Estes Park, gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park. I had roughly 3 months to completely plan a trip that I knew basically nothing about, to places I’d only ever seen pictures of. Good thing I didn’t need to make advance dining reservations and fastpasses like a Disney trip!

Summer was filled with vacation planning, and before I knew it, August 3rd was here. We weren’t leaving Manchester until mid afternoon, so I had plenty of time to pack and do some errands, before I picked Nick up, so that mom could take us to the airport.