We hopped in the car bright and early to set out on unknown adventures. I had come up with a list of sights to see between Denver and Colorado Springs. We started out at a place called "the Ghost Town Museum"
This was very clearly a tourist trap and I tried to steer the kids away from it but Big Boy begged to go inside. There was a gift shop full of western nick knacks, mostly made in China. For the price of admission you could visit the "ghost town". It was basically a very large building with faux buildings mimicking a western town. The "buildings" were roped off so that you had to look at everything from doorways and windows. There were tons of artifacts, probably mostly real, and they were labeled with little informational tags. It was clearly a museum experience rather than the ghost town experience I was expecting. The kids seemed to enjoy it enough but I would put it on my "skip this attraction" list.
We also stopped off at a "Cliff Dweller Village" but this turned out to be an even bigger disappointment than the ghost town. I can't find my pictures so you will have to rely on my description but you are not missing much. I could not get a feel for whether these were authentic cliff dwellings, carefully restored and then made handicapped accessible or if they were entirely manufactured. But, for thousand year old cliff dwellings they were ground level and appeared newer than my fifteen year old house. We spent about two minutes there and spent the entire time regretting the entrance fee we paid..
But the day got better after that. He headed toward an area called the Garden of the Gods. It is a park with amazing rock formations. We pulled up to the first area and the kids told me that they would wait in the car )playing video games). I could not beleive them and had to fore them to get out. But once they did, they fell in absolute love with the place and I could not get them back into the car for hours. Who knew that all I had to do to get them fresh air and exercise was to take them to Colorado.
I eventually manged to drag the kids back into the car and we drove around the park some more. We didn't find any stops as magical as the first one so after enjoying our picnic lunch, we headed back out onto the highway.
We drove to a place called The North Pole and discovered that it was nothing more than a Christmas themed gift shop and amusement park, hardly worth pulling off the highway for.
We found another hiking trail in Colorado Springs but it still didn't compare to the Garden of the Gods so, by popular demand, we went back down to the fist climbing spot and enjoyed some more hiking and rock climbing.
By the time we arrived back in Denver, it was getting dark and we were too exhausted even to take a dip in the pool. Who am I kidding, of course the kids swan again. But no long after, we were fast asleep in our hotel room.
No comments:
Post a Comment