On Tuesday, Oct. 1st we arrived in the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado a sprawling city of 465,000+ with an additional metropolitan population of another 300,000 making it the second-largest city in Colorado. The city covers an area of 195 square miles, making it the most extensive municipality in the state as far a size (not population); at 6,035 feet the city stands over a mile above sea level. Located on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountain range, near the base of Pike's Peak at 14,115 ft, it is a very unique American city. What's unique about it?
Well, for one thing, it has one of the very best municipal parks that exist in our great country(only Central Park in New York City is rated higher). The park has a very unique name as well, "Garden of the Gods".
On Oct. 2nd we drove to the park to explore it and were rewarded by some fantastic sights. As you will see this park is every bit as great as any National or State Park, maybe better than some.
I met thirty to one hundred or more new people and made friends with them each day that we visited the park. Colorado Springs is listed among the top ten friendliest cities in America. Rochester, NY is listed as number one by the same survey. In 2018, US News and World Report named Colorado Springs as the "Most Desirable" place to live in the United States.
The collection of monoliths and unique rock formation in this park are just fantastic. These formations below are over 300 feet high above the high desert of Colorado Springs.
There are several different colored monoliths in the park, red, grey, and white are among them.
Each of these rock formations has a unique name as well. See if you can visualize the reason for the name of each?
Sentinal Spires
Cathedral Spires
Balanced Rock
The Buffalo
We visited one of the oldest remaining trading posts in the United States in the center of the park where we found a stuffed Alaskan Brown bear (it is huge, over nine feet high).
Yikes! I think, that if this big guy saw me in the wild, he would think I was his lunch!
From there we took a nice, but strenuous hike up to a formation called "the Siamese Twins".
While there we met a couple from Penfield, NY, and had a picture of us taken for our archives.
We enjoyed our exploration of the Garden of the Gods so much, we returned the next day, Oct. 3rd. This time we did some more hiking and explored the rest of the park that we hadn't seen before.
Yep, that's Dad clowning around again at sentinel spires.
Then we ran across Bigfoot (or a big-foot at least).
Later we ran into one of the local inhabitants out for a mid-afternoon stroll in the park. I don't think she liked me because she left rather abruptly.
Then the highlight of the tour occurred when Mom and Dad observed a crowd of people gathering near the side of the road.
What they found was a group of male Bighorn Sheep competing for dominance in the herd in anticipation of rutting season which will come in early December. These guys compete in an age-old ritual by ramming each other headfirst.
Each will rear up on his hind legs, accelerate as hard as he can, and charge at his rival making a loud banging noise when they connect until the group establishes a dominant male. He then gets the pick of the available females when their breeding time arrives.
Some of the local people refer to them as "headbangers", and boy do they! A Park Ranger told us they head-butt each other, sometimes lasting nearly all day, then they move on to another location and do it again.
Tomorrow we are going to see the Red Rock Canyon Open Space Park😀.
Wow...they're horns are huge!
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