Vacation Day 2: A Day of Awesomeness

So, vacation day #2 is drawing to a close, and it was an awesome day, starting with breakfast. The hotel I'm staying at is not fancy (because I'm cheap), but it did advertise that it offered a free continental breakfast each morning, which I thought would help save me a few bucks. So I go down to the breakfast this morning to be thoroughly disappointed. There was no fresh fruit (as advertised there would be), the pancakes - all 2 of them that were left - were like dried up frisbees, and the coffee was weak. I couldn't start my day on such a dismal note, so I took myself down to the Panera down the road, and had breakfast there. (True confession: I love Panera. This was my third visit to that Panera within less than 24 hours. I'll probably go back there for dinner tonight too.) My breakfast consisted of one of their delicious breakfast sandwiches, two cups of hazelnut coffee, and a good book - all looking over the Rocky Mountains on a clear, sunny morning.

Another thing that made me smile this morning: There was a college girl sitting at the table next to me, with a pile of textbooks and her laptop pulled out. But as I was leaving, I noticed that instead of reading her textbooks, she had a Bible open on the table in front of her, to the book of Mark. That just made my day too, for some reason.

I then headed over to the Garden of the Gods, which is a free park in Colorado Springs. The pictures I took hardly do justice to the amazing-ness of this park:

This formation was my favorite - it's called "Three Graces"

The weather could not have been more perfect - it was sunny, blue skies, hardly any clouds, and in the upper 70's. I only got to see a bit of the park, so I think I'll go back again on Saturday. It was just amazing to see God's creative handiwork on display here.

Lunch was a buffalo burger (real buffalo!) at the Garden of the Gods visitor center - where you eat lunch looking over the park.

Then it was on to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. The Cliff Dwellings are authentic dwellings of the Anasazi people who lived in this area over 1,000 years ago. These dwellings have been preserved and are open for people to tour:





It was really neat to be able to go into the homes, and to imagine what life was like for the native people back then. I'm pretty sure they must have all been quite short, as the "doors" you climbed in and out of were more like window-sized, and the ceilings were all very low.

When I returned to my car, this cool western-looking bug was on the window:


After a long day in the sun, I decided I needed some ice cream. On my way to find the ice cream, I stopped by the American the Beautiful park near downtown Colorado Springs. Alas, there was no ice cream to be found there, so with the help of Lucy the GPS (what would I do without her!) I made my way into downtown Colorado Springs, where I wandered around a bit before finding an awesome ice cream place called "Josh & John's Ice Cream" (homemade ice cream). I had a waffle cone filled with chocolate peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream. Yep, it was awesome. Hey, I'm on vacation - it's okay. After the ice cream I sat in a park and read a book for a while before moseying on back to my hotel.

What a great day. Tomorrow: to the top of Pike's Peak - "America's Mountain"!