This day would also prove to be the laziest day of this trip thus far. I had not slept well the previous night. It took a while to get to sleep, and it was well after one in the morning before I managed to sleep. But I woke up early, and just felt worn pretty much all day. Perhaps the constant rushing of the trip simply was catching up with me. Or, perhaps it was just one of those kinds of days.
It took a while to rouse myself up enough to get going on this morning, in any case. Unfortunately, everything just felt sluggish. Part of it was that I did not want to get caught in one of those infamous traffic jams that western cities tend to be known for. But by around 10:30 or 11am or so, I had to remind myself that we were on this trip and only had limited time. That was enough to get going, and we finally started another day of exploring.
We drove the hour and a half to Colorado Springs, where the Garden of the Gods is located. It was very bright, and the sun had a relentless quality to it that felt reminiscent of the desert southwest. It was really hot, and here, it became a lot easier to believe that Colorado has a semi-arid climate, and shares some traits with the desert farther south.
But the Garden of the Gods was worth it. It is an astonishing place with some wild formations of red rock that would not look out of place in Utah.
We took it all in, admiring the unorthodox landscape. It was strange, and maybe a little unsettling, to see signs warning that rattlesnakes may be around in the area. So we stayed mostly on the trails, as the sign instructed us to do.
It was a beautiful place to visit, and descriptions inevitably fall short of doing justice to this place. Look at the pictures, and you can get a better idea of what this place is like. It is called Garden of the Gods for a reason.
There were rock climbers scaling some really steep and difficult looking rocks. We learned that it was here that the state of Colorado got it's name. Colorado is Spanish for the color red, after all.
We did some mild hikes where we were allowed to, and found a nice area of rock in the shade. It was very comfortable, and one guy there was actually sleeping. Some young kid with a backpack who was by himself, and he reminded me of Chris McCandless, the young man who went off on his own for a trip out West which lasted years. He wanted, and got, a wild Alaskan adventure, although he ultimately met with a bad end.
Anyway, we snapped some pictures, of course, and then headed into the nearby town of Manitou. It was a nice enough looking town, although the traffic was really bad. We then headed to the cliff dwellings, which I really wanted to see.
When my son and I first started taking these trips out West in 2015, I had hoped to visit Mesa Verde. We were then in Flagstaff, so we were not terribly far. But logistically, it did not work out.
But we finally made it there on our next trip, in 2016. What an amazing experience! I had wanted to visit that for many years, ever since a young boy, seeing the image of it on the National Parks stamp series.
The one thing about it, which is both good and bad, is that you cannot visit inside. That is good, because it stays well preserved. But the downside is that you cannot go inside of the rooms and actually see where they lived.
The Manitou Cliff Dwellings are different in that regard. You can go inside and see where the ancient ones resided. However, you also get the definite sense that this place is not nearly as well preserved. In fact, the parking lot is way too close, and you get the sense that this place is more focused on making a buck from this being an inevitable tourist destination,rather than focusingon preserving the integrity of a place of obvious significant historical and cultural value.
Nevertheless, I felt very privileged to be able to visit it. It is significantlysmaller than Mesa Verde, yet it also clearly resembles it. And yes, I definitely took advantage of actually being able to go inside of the rooms and seeing what the inside is like, which we were not allowed to do at Mesa Verde, for obvious reasons.
Took quite a few pictures, to boot. Here are some:
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