Monday, November 14, 2005

Colorado (4)

The past few days I didn't do much from a sightseeing point of view. A had a very relaxed time these days. Spend my days with reading, watching some tv, sleeping, internet to check the news and some of my favorite websites en weblogs and had some talks with Julie, her husband Alan and Julie's son Brian. I met Julie's sister last Thursday and that night Julie and I went to a sportsbar to have dinner and watch an ice-hockeygame on a big screen with some of Julie's friends.

This Saturday Julie and Alan took me on a ride into the mountains. This time a bit more further away than the weekend before. After a nice ride with nice scenery we first checked in at the motel in Frisco where we were suppose to stay for the night. After checking in and a short rest we drove up to Southpark (the real city not from the cartoon). The town itself is not much special, basically it is a kind of ghosttown/old miningtown. I just wanted to have a picture from me with one of the Southpark signboards, because I'm a big fan of the cartoonserie. On the way back we came through some nice ski resort (I forgot the name of the city) where I bought some t-shirts for presents.

After that we went back to the motel, took a rest again and went out for dinner. In the mean time it started to snow pretty heavy. We were suppose to go to Pike's Peak on Sunday, but that also depended on the weather. After checking the weather forecast we decided to leave early at 7:30 A.M. Despite the heavy snowing from the night before the roads were not that bad, the weather was excellent and we arrived ahead of our schedule, so we were able to take an earlier train up to Pike's Peak with it's top at 14.100 feet (about 4.300 metres). The 80 minute trainride with some very steep parts was very nice and showed the change in landscape from trees, huge rocks, creeks, small waterfalls to just snow, and ice above the treeline. The views from the top with it's high and very cold winds, was very spectacular. After looking around and the trainride back we drove up to the nearby "Garden of the Gods" a collection of red sandstone rock formations formed through 300 million years of erosion.

After taking a look around, visiting the visitor's centre and taking some pictures we went home. On the way back we had dinner somewhere to finish off a very nice weekend with some spectacular views and sightseeing and to finish a nice and relaxed two week holiday with Julie and Alan.

Tomorrow I'm flying back to Holland, so this will be my last post from the USA. I'll post a few pics from our weekendtrip to Southpark and Pike's Peak and I will post some more pics later after I got back to Holland. I hope you like them.
A view from the parking place at our motel In Frisco
View from the train to Pike's Peak
Here and there you might see some reflection from the train window
View from the top (more pics later)

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