Colorado: Pikes Peak

One thing we knew for sure we wanted to do in Colorado Springs was drive to the top of Pikes Peak. Nathan has hiked to the top before, but we figured that wasn't really possible this time with Evie and me. :) You can get there by driving this crazy twisty turny very steep road or by taking the Cog Train (which basically goes straight up the mountain - see pic below).
Because we wanted flexibility with Evie and wanted to be able to take our time and stop for pics if we wanted, we decided to drive. Plus, cramming in the train with a baby and many other people didn't sound super appealing. That's the official reason. The real reason is that Nathan was eager to try driving the crazy road. See pics below to see our my view from the passenger seat going up and down the mountain (going up I saw mostly clouds and cliffs ;)).
Apparently there is a race up the mountain every year. The average time for someone like us to make it up is an hour... the fastest time for the racers in their race cars is 10 min!!! I can't even imagine how crazy that is. Our friends watched the race last year and saw a car crash - going off the mountain end over end. Thankfully the guy survived and was ok!

Anyway, the drive really wasn't that bad at 30 mph and we really enjoyed it - so beautiful and so many great views. We stopped by a lake part way up and it was just gorgeous.
Evelyn liked the wild flowers the best (she was allowed to look, but not pick). :)
We did make it up to the top! 14,110 feet!
They make donuts at the top of the mountain that are supposedly the fluffiest ever because of the altitude. They were pretty delicious. You can see that Evie was much more concerned about getting bites of our donuts than smiling for a picture.

Elephant Ride

Manitou Springs, CO has a cool outdoor arcade with a bunch of those grocery store rides that we all thought were so cool as kids but never got to ride. But Evie asked really nicely and we let her ride the 25 cent elephant ride. She loved it!

First Solid Food

This video is a little dated, but these videos are of Evie's first solid food experience:


Thankfully she is much more interested now:

Colorado: Garden of the Gods, etc

Sunday we went to church with the Strickenburgs and then the 6 of us headed for Colorado Springs and Garden of the Gods. Garden of the Gods is made of huge, very interesting rocks. We could pay a lot to watch a 12 minute video on how these rocks were formed, but we decided to wikipedia it instead. They are beautiful and fascinating! (btw - Pikes Peak is the big mountain in the background of all these pics :))

Potential Christmas card picture?? :)

With 6 people, 2 of which are babies, getting everyone to look the same direction can be tricky. :)
Can you tell why these rocks are called the Kissing Camels? :)
Exploring the rocks... how small we are gives you an idea of how big the rocks really are!

Can you even see Evie in this one?? :)
After doing the paved hike all together, Nathan, Evelyn and I decided to do a few more hikes to see the rocks. Evie of course conked out. :)
Pikes Peak, Nathan and Evelyn peaking through the hole (these rocks are called the Siamese Twins :))
After hiking around for a while we drove to Manitou Springs to walk around their cute downtown and to get ice cream. While we were there we drove past Summit Ministries where Nathan went to Summit years ago. I was a Bryan Summit girl so it was fun seeing where he went.

Downtown Manitou has a large outdoor arcade area. Nathan thought it would be great if we gave Evie a ride on one of those $0.25 ride things... She LOVED LOVED LOVED it. :p Keep an eye out for a video of her on this elephant. These pictures will have to do in the meantime. :)        

Colorado: Denver

We had such a great time in Colorado this past week. It was a great mix of time with friends, time sight seeing and time just as a family. It was our first family vacation since Evie was born and we loved it.

Evelyn was an amazing little traveler. I think she did better with the 2 hour time change than Nathan and I did. Thankfully we had a direct flight to Denver which cut down on the travel time. Now that can move she got a little antsy on the plane so we cleared out our leg room (what leg room you get!) and made a play area for her. She was delighted to crawl around for a while. Don't worry, much hand cleaning was done afterwards. :) And yes, she is still in her cow sleeper from our trip to Chic-fil-e earlier that day.

We stayed with our friends, the Strickenburgs the first two nights. On Saturday they took us on this beautiful hike in the mountains. There were a lot of different wild flowers, aspen and pine, mountains and excellent company. :) Evelyn and David loved riding in their backpacks. :)

The Mortiers


The Strickenburgs


Along the trail...


All that hiking wore the babies out! :)

After the hike we drove up a bit higher to get a great view of the mountains. We love mountains. Nathan misses the AK mountains and I miss mountains even though I've never lived near any Grammy always told me stories of growing up in the Colorado Rockies though so I've always especially wanted to see these mountains! (I'm sad the mountains don't show up super well in some of these :( Just know that they were even more magnificent in real life :))

It was such a fun hike. Definitely one of the trip highlights!

When we got back Evie and David had a great time playing together. They're both in the stage of where they know what they want and they know how to crawl and get it which means its time for the sharing lessons to begin. :) They did better with sharing as the week went on. :)