Friday, July 07, 2006

Water world

For the fourth of july weekend we joined a collegue of Richard's and went to Denver.
We left home on friday night after work collected takeaway at Las Vegas and found a camp at Sugarite State Park before dark. Sugarite Canyon is a beautiful with cliffs along the top edge there has been extensive coal mining in the area in the past. The top end, almost on the Colorado boarder has been damed to form a lake (Lake Maloya) We camped at soda pocket campground about half way up the canyon. The drought here combined with the thunderstorms and dry ligtning strikes has ment that the campground closed on the 3rd of July, this is happening alot around the state they are most concerned about people getting trapped by fires rather than creating them. Still it provoded us a a conveniant stop and we saw deer, hummingbirds and butterflies.

Since we had a destination in mind we headed straight up the I-25, we stopped for supplies at Pueblo and had a look at Trinidad and Colorado Springs, in fact we joined hundreds of other people at Garden of the gods park. I think it was just as well we weren't trying to walk any of the trails as it was bedlam. Much like Bandelier was on Memorial day. But the rock is incredible, so the slow traffic wasn't really a problem.
We had thought of camping near Denver but weren't really surprised to discover the campgrounds full when we arrived. We decided to stay in a hotel in Winchester the Marriot Springfield suites, very similar to the Residence Inn we were so familiar with. We did some shopping had dinner across the road at an Italian resturant, it was really nice though the area seemed very new and there were no houses near by. We were headed to a water park in Denver It was much bigger than the one in Amarillo, lots of rivers which you ride rafts on and a couple of wave pools, some big sides and a nice area for the under 48"ers with several small slides and water fountains and things. We had a great day there, Liam liked the Lost river of the Pharaohs best. Madeline enjoyed the river rides as well thou she wasn't so keen on going backwards, but neither was I!

We left the park about 4ish and headed into the hills.

3 comments:

M + J said...

Hi I have been trying to skype you guys for days but you never seem to be online. Looks like we will be leaving Monroe tomorrow, so might have run out of time now. I would call your landline if I knew the number...

Susan Harper said...

There's a good quilt museum in Colorado Springs I think. And I'll be spending a few days in Grand Junction, Colorado at the beginning of October or so.

Christine said...

I want to get back to Colorado Springs it looked like an interesting if possibly a bit touristy place. Its funny how used to adobe architecture I've got already, so other Amreican towns look really different. Pretty paint jobs and wooden houses.