The Road Trip Continues

 Hello, everyone.

In the last post, the road trip arrived in Pueblo, Colorado. We resume there, with our drive into Denver.

This was a relaxing trip, so we didn't just dash up I25 to the big city. We drove to Colorado Springs on the freeway, and then went along smaller roads. 

(We didn't visit Garden of the Gods park, as we had done that in a previous trip some years back. It's very pretty, but we wanted to see new things. Garden of the Gods is a collection of very interesting rock formations in Colorado Springs.)

We drove west on US24 to Manitou Springs. There are various things in this area, as well as the lovely mountain views while driving. We visited the Manitou Springs Cliff Dwelling attraction. This is privately owned and is much more dog and family friendly than we expected a park service cliff dwelling site would be. 

Apparently each family had one
small, low-ceilinged room.

This is the photo of the nine family townhouse. 

The houses had door-blocking stones to seal the openings at night, both for the doors and for the small windows.

This apartment was unusual because of the 
carefully created lintels on the openings.

The information signs included some interesting information about winters in the area; the cliff dwelling apartments--low ceilinged and one roomed mostly--had no fireplaces in them. The thought is that when the door stones and window stones were in place the family would all snuggle up together under their animal skin or woven blankets (I don't know if these folks had the impressive weaving culture that later Indians have) and would stay warm enough together.

The apartments were visit-able, and the one that retained a balcony was reinforced so (one at a time!) a person could climb the ladder and see what it was like to view the valley from the balcony. 

The little village had what appeared to be a community cooking arrangement and also a community granary.

Upper story apartments were accessed by notches formed in the wall--surely there must have been more than these bare dips! like a rope?--or by wooden ladder. I would have hated to have to run like crazy with children to get ahead of a Blue-Norther type blizzard coming over the mountain if I had to get into one of those upper story apartments!

The pup viewing the parking lot,
photo taken from the balcony of
one of the aparments.

There is also a shop with many interesting things to buy, like books about the Indians who built the cliff dwellings and the natural plants of the area and so on. Plus of course the usual jewelry and tee shirts, etc. The shop is also dog friendly, though we kept our pup outside as we were concerned that she might wag her tail in the wrong place. The shop also included a museum.

We continued west along US24 and took the turn on US285, which went through Fairplay, and then through Breckenridge--pretty place, with dog-friendly restaurants (picnic tables on patio allow your leashed pup) and a war memorial honoring the 10th Mountain Division.

The skiing soldier has a pack on his back, which doesn't show well at this angle. I do wonder if the sculptor forgot to ask for photos of the men rigged up to fight when making this, the pack doesn't look large enough to hold a rifle and I didn't notice one slung over the shoulder either. But it's a lovely memorial anyway, and conveniently in town so it can be viewed while strolling between restaurants and parking spaces. 

A sharp-eyed reader will note that the mountains in this area still had snow on their tops. (Behind the statue.)

After visiting Breckenridge, we took I70 into Denver. As interstate highways go, this is quite scenic.