Day 7: August 18th - Birthday Surprises!

Happy Birthday, Christine!

Today is my birthday & my best present was Phil’s arrival in Colorado Springs.  To make it even better – he was able to catch an earlier flight in Dallas/Ft. Worth, which enabled him to land here 2 hours earlier than planned.  Of course, that meant I had to call up Enterprise this morning & ask them to pick me up at the campground earlier than scheduled, which they sort of managed to do.

After driving Phil to the RV, we decided to explore the very close by “Garden of the Gods”, a geological wonderland of amazing sculptural stone formations.  Most are a stunning shade of red, just like what we saw in central Australia two years ago.  However some are gray-brown to almost white – it all depends on the minerals & sediments that comprise the formation.  We were able to drive a long winding roadway to see the various formations, with many stops for hiking & photography along the way.  Our favourite spot was the “Balanced Rock”  a 700 ton, 300 million year old rock formation that looks like a gigantic rock barely balancing on a relatively tiny pedestal.  Although visitors are not permitted to climb, hike or walk on the rock formations, unless you have a permit for technical rock climbing, here we were all free to climb & pose on the rocks.

We thought it best to have an early dinner, since Phil woke up at 2:55am EST to get here!  I had seen an advertisement for “The Melting Pot”, which is a fondue restaurant.  We splurged on the special dinner, which included a cheese course with lots of yummy appetizers for dipping, then a salad course (no dipping, just dressing), followed by the main course of simmering broths in which we could cook our various meats (beef & chicken), raviolis & seafood (tiger shrimp & lobster tails).  We also had an assortment of vegetables, but these weren’t as enticing.  Finally, we had dessert – the Chocolate Course!  It was extraordinary & the four of us didn’t even come close to finishing off the delicacies we had available to dip – but, boy, did we try!!

Happy sigh!