This past summer we went for the first time on a trip without the boys. We drove to Amarillo to fly from there to Denver because we saved almost $150 doing so. Pablo and Delia and the cousins came up to stay with Christian and Nicholas during this week trip.
The morning we left I was freaking out as we were driving to Amarillo. I was worrying over leaving the boys and freaked out about what would happen if something happened to us while we were gone. Needless to say, I probably would have had a panic attack if I had those...but I finally calmed down.
We got to Denver and stayed in a hotel there the first night. We drove out to Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs, and saw the mountains and Colorado in all its beauty at the Garden of the Gods. Here are a couple of pictures from that.
This picture is from one of the entrances to the Garden of the Gods. We meant to come back and take better pictures of it, but we forgot about it and exited through the other part of the park. These rocks were amazing to see in person. I had seen pictures, but it is so much more impressive in person. Unfortunately the cars were everywhere, so we were unable to get a good shot.
We took this picture from the exit of the Garden of the Gods. The rain was coming in and would rain on the mountains and not anywhere else. It was pretty cool and made for some excellent pictures.
This is a picture in Manitou Springs. I LOVED this place. I told Eddie that I could totally see us living there. It was just a small community about 15 minutes from Colorado Springs. It was breathtaking and beautiful. There were tourists everywhere and we did agree that with all the tourists, that Manitou Springs might NOT be the place for kids. I loved being there, though.
These pictures were of the
Manitou Cliff Dwellings. The cliff dwellings were home to the Anasazi Indians. The guys that we saw performing come up every summer to perform original dances first performed by their ancestors. These men are the immediate ancestors of the original dancers that started this tradition of coming back to do the dancing for the Cliff dwellings and to educate others about their history.
These are more pictures from the Garden of the Gods. The last one is of the clouds and rain coming over the mountains. We took it just outside of the Cliff Dwelling entrance. It was one of my favorites because of the clouds...they look so magnificent. I was in awe as I watched them blow over the mountains.
The following day we went into Denver. We had reservations at a Bed and Breakfast right off of downtown. It was called the
Gregory Inn Lodo, and we absolutely loved it. The location was ideal because we could walk about 6 blocks and get to the light rail and take it into downtown (about 15 blocks? away). We could also ride the bus back and forth. It took us a while to get the transportation down, but once we figured everything out we were good.
We went to the
Denver Museum of Nature and Science one of the days we were there. They had some really neat exhibits and it took us all day to get through it.
We walked through downtown and made sure we went up the courthouse steps to the "one mile" mark so that we could say we had been "one mile" above sea level in the "Mile High City." We wandered through a farmer's market of sorts in the middle of downtown. We stopped and took a picture here.
We also went to the Denver Art Museum. This building was truly awesome to look at. I tried to get it in a picture, but I was too close and could not get far away enough...so, here it is in a couple of pictures. Very cool!
Overall, our vacation was memorable, fun and amazing. Nicholas wouldn't talk to me on the phone and I had to deal with that, but I would go again. To this day, Nicholas asks me if we are going to leave when Grandma and Grandpa Ozuna come. I always reassure him that we will not be leaving, but for some reason he focuses on this. I think that he loved the time with his grandparents, but really missed Mommy and Daddy a lot.
