Colorado Springs and Boulder

After our visit to the Great Sand Dunes, we continued heading north on I-25 to Boulder and decided to stop for the night in Colorado Springs and stayed at a campground called LoneDuck. You can imagine how excited I was! We also chose to go to Colorado Springs because we wanted to watch the solar eclipse from Pikes Peak. Our plan didn't exactly go as intended and we ended up having to book it up the mountain before it close at 4:00. Now, rushing up 14,115 feet isn't exactly an easy task. About 1/2 way up it started to blizzard and there were moments when you thought you were driving right into the heaves / off a cliff. There is a permanent grip mark on my steering wheel now. We weren't exactly prepared for the sub-zero temperatures, so when we got to the summit, we took a couple pictures and headed back down. So, in a nutshell, we didn't see the solar eclipse up there.

But we DID see it at the bottom of the mountain. After waiting about 2 hours and nearly blinding ourselves, there it was, the partial solar eclipse. Not something I'd write home about...

The next day we headed up through the Garden Of The Gods to Boulder and stopped in Nederland to see Rachel, Peter's sister. We visited their beautiful mountain house, had a lovely lunch in town and the of course, rode the Carousel of Happiness. Best carousel ever!! Every animal was hand carved out of wood and it even had a traditional Wurlitzer (a.k.a. the machine that plays music)!

We stayed the night at Colin's place in Superior, right outside Boulder. I also made sure to visit the Molecular Cellular Biology Department where my Mom got her PHD. I loved Boulder! I would live here in a heart beat. I can only imagine what mischievous things my parents were up to when they lived here.

After having a delicious chicken meal, we were on the road again, no time to waste!

Ale Lifting Rocks at Garden of the Gods

In front of the MCDB Building in Boulder