Playing Hooky

First, the QOTD
"Are we at the top of Pike's Peach yet?"

We took the day off today. No chores, no DIY, no previously scheduled social commitments.  On a whim we headed south to Colorado Springs.  First stop, one very cool, very accessible, very tall mountain, Pikes Peak.

A little back story, we just finished reading James and the Giant Peach AND it's peach season here, so you can't really blame F for constantly calling our states most famous mountain a fruit.

We promised we'd drive all the way to the tippy top and we did.

For any non-Colorado readers, you know the song "America the Beautiful"?

America the Beautiful

Words by Katharine Lee Bates,
Melody by Samuel Ward

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

KLB went on her own trip up Pike's Peak and it inspired her to write that song.  Today was a glorious day indeed up on top.  No wind.  Balmy temperature, and clear, clear air so you could see not only the fruited plain but other mountain ranges for hundreds of miles around.  I don't know how many times I've been sitting up at the peak in snow/clouds/pouring rain/gale force winds/lightning storms and today made up for all those trips.

One of several bighorn sheep we saw on our way up

FFM was enchanted with the the cog rail which he somehow already knew all about.  The grade of the mountain is too steep for traditional rail so the trains have a cog, or gear, in the center to keep them from slipping.

We drove, but F had to check out the cog train.  We'll ride it this fall.

We lunched in Manitou Springs, one of the towns affected by the Waldo Canyon fire last month.  We saw evidence of the fire on the surrounding hills and were amazed at the skill of the firefighters keeping it from so many structures.  They truly did an amazing job, while a devastating fire things could have been much, much worse.  It was heartwarming to see homemade signs of thanks to the crews everywhere, small ones posted in shop windows to giant bedsheets hung from houses and fences.

Back in town we discovered that the exposure to high altitude shrank our kid.

Was it a good day?  Why yes, just peachy.