We took the opportunity to do some sightseeing in Colorado Springs since I would be attending a conference near Denver at the latter part of the trip. We spent 3 nights in Colorado Springs and the rest of the nights at the conference hotel in West Minster. The flight from Minneapolis to Denver was only an hour and half, so it was a fairly short flight.
There are quite a few interesting places to visit in Colorado Springs. We visited the U.S Air Force Academy, which has a very impressive Cadet Chapel. The Gardens of the Gods was probably one of the highlights during our stay here. The beautiful rock formations reminded us of some of the national parks we visited in Utah. We did the tour at the U.S. Olympic Training Center. We also paid a visit to Seven Falls and the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, which are pretty touristy.
We drove up to two summits on this trip: Pikes Peak and Mount Evans. Both summits are at about the same height at ~14000 feet. The views from both summits are different and Mount Evans seemed to have more snow on the ground than Pikes Peak. Altitude sickness is certainly a real deal in Colorado, especially at the summits. We were very fortunate to stumble upon several mountain goats at Mount Evans.
Somehow, we didn’t spend too much time in Denver simply because I was very busy attending all the technical sessions in the conference. On the last night of our trip, my coworker and us spent our evening in Boulder.
We had a wide variety of meals from different countries throughout this trip: German, Sri Lankan, Thai, Japanese, Mediterranean and American. We also tried bison, yak, elk, alligator tail and rattle snake. The yak meat and elk meat weren’t as great as we thought they were. However, the bison meat was excellent.
Colorado is one beautiful place and we are certain we will come back to visit the Rocky Mountains National Park in near future.
