Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Colorado Springs, Wyoming, South Dakota

Saturday morning we awoke in a hotel in Colorado Springs.  After a good night’s sleep in a comfortable bed we headed to the National Olympic Training Center and toured the facility.  The Center not only houses Olympic caliber athletes, but also allows local athletes to train during camps.  We were able to see boys gymnastics, women’s volleyball, men’s wrestling and swim teams practicing while on our tour.  To our surprise, the swimming pool was full of Florida Gator swimmers warming up for a competition.  Also, while we were there the center was setting up for the Modern Pentathalon National competition to be held later that day.
After lunch, we drove to an elevation of 14,110 feet to the top of Pike’s Peak.  It was a balmy 44 degrees at the summit, so we took as many pictures as we could as fast as we could.  The views on the ride up/down the mountain and at the peak were spectacular, despite us being so close to the clouds.  It was somewhat scary to drive to the peak because the road is quite close to the edge of the mountain for a majority of the ride.  
Sunday morning, we packed up the car again then made on last stop at the Air Force Academy before heading north out of Colorado Springs.  We made a quick stop at the famous Chapel which was stunningly beautiful on the inside, full of stain-glass window accents along the peaks in all directions and an enormous pipe organ in the balcony.  
We then drove North on I-25 on our way to Mount Rushmore.  Tim wanted to make a stop at the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, but unfortunately they are not open on Sunday.  He figured we would need a few beers to make it through Eastern Wyoming.  The most exciting part of this area of Wyoming was driving past a section of the Oregon Trail.  
In the Black Hills of South Dakota on our way to Mount Rushmore, we drove past The Crazy Horse Monument. We were pleased that there were great views of this tremendous work-in-progress from the road.  Soon after, we successfully made it to Mount Rushmore. It was spectacular to see in person, but we both agreed it looked much smaller than we had imagined it.  Either way it was still wonderful to see and a nice pit stop.  We had plans of staying in a hotel in the area of Mount Rushmore, but when we returned to the car we decided to get as much of South Dakota behind us as possible. Which is the only choice if you heading West out of Rapid City (or any direction for that matter) as the next town of any significance that would have a decent hotel is on the other side of the state. Unfortunately we did not account for losing an hour crossing in to the Central Time Zone.  So we planned on making it to Mitchell South Dakota around 10:30pm, but it ended up being 11:30 due to the time change. 
Once you descend from the Black HIlls, South Dakota along I-90 is miserably flat and boring.  This stretch of I-90 from Rapid City to Mitchell SD must have been the inspiration for the game frogger.  We have never seen so many frogs hopping across the highway in a high stakes game of crossing the road. Most were unsuccessful in making it to the other side as they met the tires of our prius.  
The 731 miles from Colorado Springs to Mitchell South Dakota by way of Mount Rushmore was by far our longest day in the car, but it went by quickly. 



Here are more of the pictures.  

2 comments:

  1. I hope no one got dysentery when you passed the Oregon Trail.

    On a different note, my longest day driving across country was 17 hours from Austin Texas to Taos, NM. It was a whole lot of nothing. It sounds like I can skip South Dakota on my next trip.

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  2. Unfortunately as soon as we crossed the trail we immediately got dysentery and all of our oxen drowned. But at this point in the drive we welcomed any and all excitement.

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