Rocky Mountain High

From the first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains on Wednesday through the experience of driving (well—riding for 5 of us—Michael is our designated ‘mountain driver’) through them, we have been just enjoying their majestic beauty.







Crossing the 10, 800 foot “Wolf Creek Pass” brought us face to face with the snow covered peaks. There is still quite a bit of snow at the top. We passed many waterfalls and the rivers are running quite swiftly with the melted snow.



After the barrenness of the desert, the green of the pines and aspens has been a welcome sight.! As much as we enjoyed seeing the uniqueness of the desert, we have a definite preference for the mountains! The scenery in Colorado has been lovely-- we think it is probably overall the prettiest state we have been in.





We arrived in Colorado Springs in time for Michael to visit the RC plane shop of a guy who he has purchased several airplane kits from. (Quick RC airplane lesson-- you can either buy them as kits where you have to assemble them completely from a kit or as 'almost ready to fly'-- this ship makes the kits.) Bill at Stevens AeroModel was super nice and gave us a tour of his shop--we got to see the computer program and fancy laser machines that they use to cut out the wood for the kits. This was a highlight for Michael (who here is surprised??!)



We checked into our campsite at the Garden of the gods campground in Manitou Springs (just outside of Colorado Springs) and rested a bit before heading out to our final destination of the evening- The Flying W Ranch. For those of you with a good memory, this is in fact our second "Flying W Ranch" of the trip (the first was WAY back in Oklahoma!)-- kind of an interesting coincidence, huh?!

This Flying W was a bit different than the other. It is a place that offers chuckwagon dinners and entertainment from their Flying W Wranglers. They also have a little western town wtih lots of antiques and shops that you can walk around while you wait for the dinner bell.

We had a traditional 'cowboy meal' of BBQ beef/chicken or steak, cowboy beans, baked potatoes, homemade applesauce, spice cake and the best biscuits on the planet (sorry Cracker Barrel!). We ate off of tin dishes which the girls loved (very 'Little House on the Prairie'!)

The 'singing cowboys' were great as well--one of them was a 5 time Grand National winning fiddle player. They sang western and gospel songs and what was super cool is that they were all Christians and were NOT afraid/ashamed to admit it from the stage. They have an awesome witness as this place is apparently packed 7 nights per week. We all agreed that it was a trip highlight. Do not miss the Flying W if you are ever in the Colorado Springs area!!



It was a great night... however, the littlest one was fading about halfway through the show and actually fell asleep in the RV before we drove the 5 miles back to our campground!