Garden of the Gods

As we left Dillon and started for home on Friday, we decided to make a stop and see the Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs. The kids had learned about it recently in an episode of the PBS kid's show "Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman" so they were excited to see it. It is an area of red rock formations that is a popular rock climbing location as well (if you have permits and the right equipment).

First we stopped at the visitor's center, where you can see an "overlook" of the park across the road.

Here's the entrance sign (taken from the visitor's center).

Also from the visitor's center, you can see one of the main rock formations, called the "Kissing Camels"

Then we drove over to the main "garden" area where they have a paved trail that goes through some of the formations. It was pretty busy and very hot, so we didn't walk through the whole area.

The kids tried squeezing through this crack (I think Courtney managed to go all the way through).

Not sure what Hannah is doing here... and I think Hayley is looking at a large group of people that were just walking by and saying things like "How cute!" (referring to McKay putting his arms around the girls).

Hayley got tired walking around (again, no stroller this vacation), so we didn't make the whole loop.

As we drove out of the park, we drove past another "famous" formation, called "Balanced Rock" that looked really neat but it was way crowded (no parking and lots of people everywhere) so we didn't stop for any pictures there. Overall, it was a fun little "diversion" though on the drive to Amarillo.

We stopped that night at a Drury Hotel in Amarillo (took this picture in the morning as we were packing up):

It was a really nice, new hotel (relatively inexpensive) with a great breakfast -- lots more than the usual pastries and cereal (things like biscuits & gravy, sausage, scrambled, eggs, etc.). I just wish hotel rooms were a little bit bigger! :-)