My birthday weekend in Colorado Springs

For my birthday I decided to do a mini vacation by myself to Colorado Springs, Colorado, a city in central Colorado that is about an hour from Denver and full of beautiful things to see and fun things to do. I arrived on Thursday afternoon and had reservations to take a cog railway train ride to the top of Pikes Peak--elevation 14,115'.

This is what greeted us while we were waiting for the train.

Here is the train pulling up to the depot. 

My seat was right next to the controls. I so badly wanted to take over! :) 

This was our engineer that day. His name is Roy.

And away we go! I got to sit at the very front of the train! (On the way up.)

Some of the scenery on the way up.

Panoramic shot.

There were some really steep inclines. 25% grade in some places. Meaning for every 100 feet we went horizontally, we went up 25 feet vertically. Also at this point we were above the tree line at about 12,000'. See? No more trees! 

At this point, those of us at the front of the train were 2 stories higher than the people at the back of the train.

Here is the summit. And yes, it was C-C-COLD!

The next day I went to the Garden of the Gods. 

This is where I started my walk through the park.

I think this one is called Kissing Camels.

And there are these signs around the park.

TALL TALL TALL formations.

And just plain ol' gorgeous scenery.

Hope you enjoyed the pics! :)