Climbing a Mountain

Before we left Colorado we decided to visit the Cheyenne Mountain State Park. We got there pretty early and hiked a few miles. The first trail we went on was called the zook loop. Then we picked up another trail along the way which was the medicine wheel. It was a little more rough than we expected. In fact, I don't think many people had walked it recently. Most of the brush had grown over the trail and it was hard to stay on it.

(You can click on pictures to enlarge them.)

Here is a picture of Dave on the trail to prove we hiked a mountain..... just kidding.

The mountain we hiked (pic taken from the car).

What the mountain looked like as we approached it.

Here is the map of the trails you could walk. In the middle is a blue map. That's the route we took and then the orange one that comes off of it.

Flowers along the trail.

Although he is not a flower, it was pretty cool to see him crawl across our path.

It got hot while we were walking. While out on our trail we passed this stream several times. Since we were super hot we stopped to cool down for a minute. I couldn't get a picture of myself, so I took one of Dave pulling ice cold water out of the stream and splashing it on his face. It was so refreshing.

Then it was time to head on to Wyoming. As we traveled down the road the land looked a lot like the one below. It was so open. You could see for ever. Then you would see a jet of land coming out of nowhere. It's hard to get the depth of the landscape in pictures, but in person it's so amazing to see. It seems like there is always something new to see.

As we crossed into Wyoming, I captured this Buffalo on the hill top. It looked like it was made out of metal.

Then we stopped at the visitor center.

This guy was inside.

Then back on the road again to our final destination.... Casper. Here's a few more pictures of what we saw along the way.

Don't ask my why, but for some reason when I saw the sign on the road for the power plant I got super excited. Maybe because I have never seen one before and it looked neat, or because the only thing I have seen for 3 days prior was rock formations (aka mountains), David, and a ton of open space with grass, cows, and more cows. :)

This one is kind of hard to see, but I was trying to show the openness of the road. Off to the right you can barely make out in the picture the road. It seemed like it went on forever.

After we stayed the night, we packed up and headed out to Montana.