The Emerald Foodie Gal : Colorado Springs, CO

Hooray! We're headed off to our vacation!

We're going to Colorado Springs, CO for our late summer vacation.
We're excited to get some good hiking in and relax.

Before our flight we're a bit tired.

Work has been insane and stressful, so I'm really looking forward to this get away.
Also, I find when you live in a concrete jungle (a.k.a. Chicago) sometimes you need to get away and go see some nature. We made a deal not to bring out iPads or work computers to get away from technology (besides our phones of course.) I'll update the blog later (most likely after our trip) with more details! It's hard to add photos on my phone so they may have to wait when I come back.

Stay tuned!

Update:
Friday, August 29
It took awhile to upload all my photos and write all my thoughts and experiences down.
So we headed it at 3:00 am to the airport for our 6:00 am flight to Denver . It was really early but I would rather be 2 hours before take off rather than miss the flight. Our flight into Denver went well but we only had 20 minutes in between our arrival to Denver and departure at Colorado Springs!
When we got off, we were running like madmen to get to our next flight! On top of the fact we both had to use the restrooms! Of course our terminal was all the way on the other side of the airport in B90. It seriously felt like we were in the movies or doing the Amazing Race! We were running across like 50 terminals! Talk about am early adrenaline rush!!!!

It's kind of funny. Wayne said, "I can now check off dramatically running in an airport off my list."
But once we got on the plane it was smooth sailing from there. Our rental car was a sleek Fiat 500. I really like it because the ride is smooth and it feels pretty spacious.

Fiat! Not bad for a rental. :)

After we checked in (luckily they had a room available) we went over to Denny's to grab mediocre food. But it was a beautiful day! Blue skies and perfect weather. No humidity and in the low 80's. We also found this really funny...I guess the bottom exit sign is if you are crawling out with smoke? But it looks rather ridiculous.

We then drove over to Palmer Park. I saw from the reviews on Trip Advisor that this place was great to hike/walk around and was free. Boy were they right! We went down the Kinnikinnick trail. The view of the mountains was gorgeous! But man was it hot in the sun! We got a big cart of water bottles and brought our bottles from home. We also slathered on sun screen and wore hats. But we were sweating pretty good by the time we got done with the trail from the heat and atmospheric pressure difference.

My one and only.

Action shot!

Pretty cool photo

Awesome view of the Mountains

We then headed on over to the Olympic Training Center for a tour of the facilities. The tour was really quick but we learned a lot which was fun. The Olympians that train here are the top 10-15% in their sport.They also train here at the facility for 3-6 years. It was a nice short tour and the whole day was perfect.

It may be hard to see but they have a count down clock of when the next Olympics will be.

Some fast facts:

In shooting, they meet the target 95% of time. For weight lifting there's two methods. The snatch and the clean and jerk (cross fitters should know these two!)
The wrestling room is warmer than normal. They have the environment like that so their muscles are stretched (so no damage) and because the wrestlers want to sweat a lot. If they are 1 ounce over weight class they cannot compete.

Everyone thinks the training center is federally funded but actually 80% comes from sponsors while 20% comes from donations or from the media contributions or sponsors.
Their workout room is brand new and has an indoor track. What's interesting though is the track team actually trains out in California.

Olympic weight lifting room

Me fooling around with one of the light weight lifting displays they have out for you to try.

Wayne after he got done jumping the long jump record on the floor.

The 3 Olympic Torches from the U.S.

2014 Sochi Olympic coats and previous Olympic medals

The pool is actually shaped like a V with the deepest part (9 feet) in the middle. The guide said that this is to help from the splashing and allows everyone the same type of water conditions. They also have a pulley system in 2 lanes. The system can pull you as fast as your personal record or the world record in the pool. Michael Phelps also trained there for the Beijing Games and the guide said Phelps was so fast the rope slacked. Another fun fact is that their dining is comparable of the Ritz Carlton. Yet, McDonald's and Tyson are the largest sponsors in food. The United States currently holds the record for Rugby for 90 years but now that Rugby will be added we will probably lose that title. And finally, the first U.S. Olympics was in St. Louis, Missouri for the 1904 World Fair. Great start for the first day!

Saturday, August 30
We got some free breakfast from the hotel. We originally were going to try and find a nice supermarket to go to and buy some snacks. But Wayne found out that there was a local farmers market going on. So we decided to swing by and see what the locals were selling. We got to the Old Colorado City farmers market about 8amish. It was cute, kind of small but the quality was still really good. Their Colorado peaches and potatoes looked awesome! It was hard to fight the urge to buy them. Peaches bruise easily and the potatoes would been interesting to haul on the plane. But it was tough! I envisioned making a peach cobbler or potato salad with fresh dill...yum!

Woke up and saw Air Balloons in the sky! Very cool.

Went to the Old Colorado City Farmer's Market. So much great looking produce! It was hard not to buy fresh produce!

Some of the cool murals

Another pic might be hard to tell, but there were 8 deer in front of this guy's yard!

We drove like 20 minutes to go hiking at the Garden of Gods. Apparently, the Garden of Gods was created from a natural fault line millions of years ago. Native Americans camped at the park in early BC. When we got there, we went in and asked the visitor center what would be some good trails to go hiking on. The woman mentioned that there were a lot of great trails to go on but the one that she likes is the Palmer trail because that goes along the mountain. But she warned that some people find it hard to hiking back uphill. In my head I was like, "Psh, I can do that. Challenge accepted." Andddd there goes little competitive Emma off an running.

The hiking trail that goes around the mountain

First sight of the rocks...so gorgeous!

When we first drove up to the parking lot, we were floored by the beauty. It's really hard to describe how awesome these looked in person. It was kind of like, you couldn't believe they were real. The hiking...all I can say is the hiking was absolutely fantastic. There were a lot of runners and dog walkers. It was really neat and everyone we saw was really friendly by saying hello and good morning. We went along Palmer Trail and crossed into the main area where all the larger formations were.

We then meandered to the Siamese Twins trail to see the Siamese Twin rock formations. I wasn't able to get a good photo of the Twin rocks, but there's some other photos below. :) They were nice but by then we were getting a little tired and beat up by the sun. It was super hot out in the sun and by then it was getting close to high noon. Plus there were a ton of tourists on the non-hiking trails. We decided to hike the way back from where we came on Palmer Trail to get away from all the people.

Challenge Completed.

A photo inside

Start of our hike around the mountain

Jump for joy!

Selfie

God, it's me Wayne. lols

A rock climber on one of the giant formations

After 3 hours of hiking, we went over to Red Rock Canyon, relaxed and devoured all of our apples. Red Rock Canyon is a series of canyons and ridges from erosion and its a protected land the city bought. It was beautiful to be away from the loud and obnoxious tourists and hike in a quieter area. It was interesting that there was a quarry in the canyon. You can see below how rigid they carved out the rocks compared to the natural formations. There was also a lake (more like a pond) in the middle. It looked gorgeous in the middle of the rocks/mountains.

After an hour or so, we drove back towards the hotel. But not until we went to Culver's! We grabbed some food and ice cream. I thought it was a nice treat that was well deserved. I mean we hiked for 4 hours and I deserve it because I am on vacation. :) Afterwards, we took a long nap. Oh man, my body was so sore! But it felt great. For dinner, we went to Shugas. I got a lavender lemonade and their Cafe Tray. Their Spicy Brazilian Coconut Shrimp soup was delicious! I think it had cilantro, curry, coconut milk and there was an underlying spice in there I couldn't detect. Nonetheless, we had a busy and wonderful day. Not bad for day 2!

Delicious apples.

Red Rock Canyon

The Quarry

The lake- so beautiful with the mountains.

Saw an old Volkswagen van. My dad love these cars.

Yummy ice cream!

Sunday, August 31
Today we are going out to Pikes Peak. We decided to take the Cog Railway up instead of drive up the mountain. It was a little more expensive but boy, am I so glad we made that call. We heard from some people that there's no rails and hairpin turns on the mountain road. That would have been scary to do in our little rental Fiat!

We saw several humming birds outside of the Cog station.
They had humming bird feeders which was really neat. But they were moving too fast for me to get a good photo. We then met a nice couple from Nebraska when we took our seats. The way the wooden seats are arranged are pretty tight. You're almost knee to knee with the person sitting in front of you. So it was sort of inevitable we'd start talking to the people sitting across from us. They said they found our baseball hats pretty funny. Originally they said they're from Ohio but lived in Michigan for a while in Lake Orion. They also offered Wayne a jacket to borrow since they said it's super cold up at the top. So that was really nice of them and pretty cool they had lived in Michigan.
We were going up to the summit of 14,115 feet! As we went up the tour guide gave us some facts about the Cog and the mountain. The first cog went up to the summit in 1891. It took about 18 months to create the Cog. Back then it ran for $5.00 a ticket. Which would be $125.00 today. Talk about expensive!

There was a lot of the pink rock formations. She mentioned that they are made out of Pikes Peak Granite. And there were a lot of Englemann spruce trees along the way that were named after a botanist named, Engelmann. His friend, named Charles Parry, had discovered them in the 1800's and named it after his friend. We also saw some Aspen trees. They only grow at 8,000 feet in high altitudes and the white powder residue from the tree's trunk can be used as a sunscreen. It only has an SPF of 5 but can be put on your nose.

There was also a little burned down hotel that was built in 1882. It had 15 guest rooms, a post office, a ballroom and a one lane bowling alley. But it got burned down in 1916 from a fire. There's a story of a couple that went up to hike pikes peak on their honeymoon in 1911. The Cog had asked them if they had wanted to take a trip down but they declined. The next day, they were found frozen to death. The mad also had a note from a friend that said, "Have a fun time on your honeymoon, don't freeze!"It was kind of a sad story but at least they were together.

We woke up and saw balloons in the sky again. Still awesome.

The Cog!

Diamond Rock

Creek along the Cog.

Getting higher!

Photo of a shack they used to stay in and work on the Cog track in the 1800's.

On the Cog there were children crying and a little kid even needed an oxygen tank. Poor kid. When the other Cog's passed us everyone saw him with the oxygen mask on. But on the ride we saw some yellow bellied marmots hiding under the rocks and running about (they looked like big woodchucks.) and a couple of rams. The rams were on the other side of the Cog so we couldn't get a good photo of them.

When we finally got to the summit. It was phenomenal. The views were amazing. You could see all the way to Kansas. As for the summit bathrooms and gift shop it was pretty packed. There were a ton of hikers, tourists and people from the Cog trains. Boy, it was cold as f**k up there. There were people standing out on the ledge of the rocks, making awesome instagram photos. I was astounded by the views but nervous because it was so windy up there! I was fine at where we were at and didn't want to go down on the edge of the rocks for fear of being blown away! I also had to hold onto my hat because I was afraid it was going to go flying in the wind. Plus I was freezing my tush up there! I'm really grateful the couple offered Wayne a pull over jacket. But despite the bitter cold of the summit, it was well worth it. :)

Afterwards, we got some BBQ for lunch around Manitou Springs. It was packed and looked like everyone had the same idea we did. Which was walk around the little town and grab food/ice-cream. But it was a nice area. It reminded me a bit of the small towns in upper Michigan. And yes we did eat ice-cream again. For dinner we went to Caspian Cafe and got some Mediterranean food. It was really delicious but it took too long for us to get our food. We got seated at 6:00pm and got out at 9:00pm. Kind of sucked that it took so long, but then again we weren't really in a hurry.

We then watched the Discovery Channel before going to bed. For some reason we were watching Naked & Afraid. I know, it sounds totally weird. But it's one of those weird shows where you don't know why you're watching it but it's very intriguing at the same time. The one episode we watched this girl was from Hawaii and she was bad-ass. They got dropped in the Maldives and had to swim through shark infested waters. She wove hats/shade umbrellas/built the hut, climbed trees to get coconuts, killed an eel...it was crazy. While the Marine guy she was suffering with a bad sunburn then suffered diarrhea from bad water. Note: if ever in the wilderness do not drink water unless you can boil it. I unno, it was just a fascinating show. Kind of put you in the spot light of what would you do. In the end, it was a long day but we had a fantastic time seeing Pikes Peak.

Monday, September 1st & Tuesday, September 2nd
We headed to downtown Colorado Springs this morning and grabbed some Starbucks for breakfast. We saw a corgi outside of Starbucks. We really want a Pembroke Welsh Corgi when we can get a place with a yard for the dog to run in. It was neat because it kind of looked like the dog was mixed with an Australian Shepard since it had 2 different colored eyes. :)

We went to Bear Creek Regional park and walked around. It was another beautiful day and we both really liked the park. They had an archery range, obstacle course and a community garden. After wandering around a bit we got Chipotle for lunch, took a nap and then grabbed food at the Macaroni Grill. My stomach was cursing me for eating heavy food. Kind of looking forward to cooking more again and getting back on our healthy diet.

We had a fantastic vacation. When we got back to Illinois, I was like, "Ugh, it's so flat!" The mountains in the background really were awesome. You almost felt like they were a background drop.I think we'll have to take another trip out to Colorado in the future. Maybe to Aspen for skiing or the Food & Wine Festival!