Friday, November 16, 2007

Miracles Do Happen

My brother finally came out to visit me here in Colorado Springs. This is my third time living out here. I do believe he had a good time though since he is planning on coming out here again next summer. We went and did a lot of the tourist sites around the area. Here's a visual guide to what all we hit.

This is in the middle of town at Palmer Park. We took my dog Chester to run around some and then stopped at the overlook to get a good view of the city.



The next place we hit was the Broadmoor. It's in the foothills on the West side of town. A really nice old hotel. Takes a few buck if you want a room.












This is one of the lights in the hallways. I'm glad no one came along while we were taking these. They would have thought we were crazy lying on the floor to get this shot.



Here's me working my camera.



And here's the shot I got.





Mark with his pony!



This is a series of sculptors sitting in someones front yard. I actually met him a while back before he passed away. These things are huge and made out of steel. They move and spin when the wind is blowing. If you want to see them they are near the entrance to Seven Falls.



After the sculptors we headed up to Helen Hunt Falls next which is located in North Cheyenne Canyon Park. You can see it was a little chilly up there.





This was on our way up Pikes Peak. We took the highway up. They had trucks hauling up gravel for road maintenance. You don't want to get in the way of one of these while they are coming down. You'd think they were in the road race they hold up there each year.



The roads near the top are steep and exposed. If you have a fear of heights you probably won't enjoy this section too much!





At the top.







It's almost like another world up here.



If you want to go up the mountain there are two other ways besides driving. One is the Cog Railway.



The other way is on foot. I've done this trail a few times and it isn't too bad. Took me about 8 hours to get to the top taking my time and stopping at the cabin at Barr Camp. Unless you want to spend all day hiking it's best to arrange for someone to pick you up at the top or arrange for passage down on the train, if they have room. I've hiked down the mountain also but that's hard on the knees!

Sunday, November 4, 2007

Downtown Colorado Springs

Here's a picture from the second hike I went on yesterday. Since Chester couldn't go on the first one, no dogs allowed, I went on two hikes yesterday. This second one was up on Section 16 off of Lower Gold Camp road. Took this with my 100mm macro lens and used Photoshop to blur the top and bottom of the picture to give it a toy model look. Fun stuff. You'll want to click on the picture to get a bigger view of it.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

I Love Weekends

The weather was beautiful today so I went for another walk in Fountain Creek Park. I'm sure you can guess by now that it isn't too far from my house. Maybe a ten minute drive tops. Didn't make it out there as early as I wanted to but the light was still nice. With the wedding season basically over it's nice to know I'll have my weekends free to goof off now! Time to do some photography just for me. Here's some sights along the way today. Hope you enjoy them.