Garden of the Gods

This morning we drove to Colorado Springs, just about 10 miles away, and made mass.  Then ate lunch.  After we drove through Garden of the Gods.  Gorgeous scenery just a couple minutes out of Colorado Springs.
Then we drove out through Manitou Springs and out towards Cripple Creek an old mining town at about 10,000 feet.  The weather was beautiful, sunny and about 70 degrees.  And the traffic was pretty heavy with mostly locals getting out and getting sun. 
We drove through Cripple Creek twice while we were looking for the Shelf Road which runs south to Canon City.  We finally found it and drove along a dirt road for about 30 miles.  The road was single lane so we had to pull over a few times to let others pass.  We followed the creek for about 10-12 miles occasionally passing someone panning for gold.  Then the creek dropped far below the road.  Sometimes it looked about 500 feet or more below us.  Sometimes the road was a sheer drop down to creek.  Kinda hard to sightsee when it's like that!  It was a really nice drive but there was no way to get any pictures.  We continued to Canon City and did a wine tasting at The Abbey a local monastery.  Didn't see any monks about but the wine was pretty good and we bought a merlot and chardonnay.  And a jar of merlot fudge sauce.  Haven't opened that yet, but I bet it'll be good on ice cream!
Got back to the campground to find it pretty deserted.  Friday afternoon it was mostly full with weekend campers.  Now there are about 20 other people here, nice and quiet.
Tomorrow we go to Pike's Peak and ride the cog train to the top, 14115 feet. 
Wednesday we move to Golden for a week.  We plan to meet up with David and Denise and spend some time catching up.  Then we'll move to Hudson which is just north of the airport where we'll leave the coach and fly home for a month.

Nice backyard view!