So we decided to try something new…dog sitting….but not for a friend but for someone we have never met. It was a little nerve wracking pulling up into the driveway of the house that was to be our home for the next 5 days; to meet the 3 dogs we agreed to sit for in Colorado Springs. The dogs were barking like banshees when we came in but settled down pretty quickly. There were 2 terrier mixes, Lucy and Choji, and a Pit/Terrier mix named BeBe. It only took about 24 hours for them to become our best friends. Gotta love the trusting dog!

The first night, the owners were still there because their flight left at 5am the next morning. I went up to bed early and Buzz stayed downstairs and was talking to the husband. Then the hail started! It sounded like rocks hitting the roof! I texted Buzz to come up to the bedroom and he couldn’t believe the racket. But he said he had gone out onto the deck and the hail was quite tiny. We found out that hail in Colorado Springs is a pretty common occurrence in the summer and fall. And we believed it seeing all the hail damaged cars and the hail repair signs lining the roads. We had hail again when we were on the top of Pikes Peak.

We hung out the first day and just enjoyed relaxing and getting caught up on some reading and some relaxing. We are so busy at home with Janice and Kyle and Nicholas that we took the time to just chill for a day. The next day we drove to the top of Pike’s Peak. I wanted to take the cog railroad but it was all sold out…another time. The drive was beautiful but harrowing and the temperature difference between the bottom and the top was almost 30 degrees! Even though we have been living at 8200 feet elevation, the 14, 115 peak still took our breath away….literally!

Hiking around Garden of the Gods was our next outing. We had been there when Nicholas first moved to Colorado 10 years ago. It is still awe-inspiring. The second picture is the famous “Kissing Camels”, hundreds of feet above our heads.

We also went on a tour of the Cave of the Winds. It is a pretty cool cave though it does not contain many stalactites or stalagmites. Photo taking in that low light proved to be quite a challenge. I decided to watch where I was waking instead of taking pics….good decision!

The sunsets over Pikes Peak were gorgeous.

We cruised through Old Colorado City and had a perfectly delightful lunch at a sidewalk cafe there called Thunder and Buttons….named after two “domesticated” elks. And, of course, we checked out Colorado Mountain Brewery and Pikes Peak Brewery, both had very good beer and food. We also checked out a very tiny brewery called Nano 180…beer not so good but cool truck outside.

I will leave you with this one last picture entitled “only in Colorado!”. (sorry, it is a little blurry…lol)