The second stop on our trip was Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. Garden of the Gods is listed as a National Landmark, and rightly so. We started at the Visitor's Center which wasn't terribly exciting, but it did have a great balcony that overlooked the park which was across the street. It allowed me to get some nice panoramic shots of the park with Pike's Peak in the background. The view was really quite beautiful. We'd seen the mountains on our way into Colorado, but

The Paint Mines Open Space in Calhan Colorado was our first official stop on our trip. I didn't know much about the place going in, and honestly thought it would just be a pull-off on the side of the road with a cool view. It was supposed to be filler, so the ride from Nebraska to Colorado Springs wasn't too boring. It turned out to be a very fulfilling experience. It turned out to not be a pull-off at all, but a park, and was actually a little bit of a chore getting there. W

We are into our second week of our trip, and I'm just now getting around to writing my first blog post. Hopefully I can get caught up. If you are too impatient, Janet has been posting daily recaps of our trip on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/142253852846958/ So launch day came, and fitting everything into the car turned out to be a little more challenging than the test run we'd done earlier. We squeezed, shifted and manipulated everything to the point we couldn'