Garden of the Gods

This past weekend, we headed down south a little over an hour to Colorado Springs.  Prior to this, the farthest south I'd made it was the outlet mall, but we were excited to cheer on a friend in Tour de Cure. The drive was absolutely gorgeous!

And as one would expect, so were the red rocks once we got to the park! I mean view...

As our friend worked on her long ride, her husband, brother-in-law, and my husband convinced me to attempt to rock climb. Mr. HaHa bought gear at the beginning of summer, but had only used it once prior to this trip; but he did just fine.

 

Me on the other hand? Well, given that I'm not afraid of heights, but not a huge fan either; I harnessed up. I was thankful that the guys we were with had plenty of experience and knew what they were doing. I took my time trying to contort my body against this huge rock and look for random hand grabs and footings.  I was slow but made my way, until I got stuck and couldn't manage to go any further. I made it up about 40% of the route and my legs wouldn't stop shaking and my arms were exhausted so I went down.  Kind of anticlimactic, but then again, I tried!  I think I could get pretty good with some practice.

The view looking up the route...

 

...and the rock the route was on!

 

Back on solid ground, we drove around the park. There are plenty of trails, great for trailing running, but the day was running late and it was extremely hot, so we opted for the car until heading to congratulate our friend!

Garden of the Gods wasn't as big as I'd expected, but it is certainly beautiful!