Colorado Vacation, Day 3

Today I got up before dawn for a 4-mile run on the trails surrounding Garden of the Gods. The trails alone were fun to run on, but the sunrise was spectacular. I stopped at Starbucks on the way back to get Sally a thank-you latte for staying with the kids, but I'm not sure that even began to cover it.

We broke base camp today to drive up to Estes Park. Before leaving Colorado Springs, we took the kids to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It is a really nice zoo on the side of a mountain, and it had a lot of animals we don't usually see at our zoo. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the morning:


This is usually the body language when Laura makes new friends on the playground.



The girls both got stuffed naked mole rats for souvenirs.



Mime Kitteh sez nuffink!




In another enclosure, the girls almost got to see where baby giraffes come from, but we elected to move on before they could ask any questions.

On the drive up to Estes Park (approximately 2.5 hours) the girls confirmed just how normal they are by asking us "are we there yet?" repeatedly. Sally and I vowed to take them on a real road trip someday to teach them a lesson. The kids had to hit the swimming pool when we arrived, and everyone was having a good time until Laura started shivering. Sure enough, when we got to the hotel room she was running a temperature, so tomorrow we are going to take it easy and hope it runs its course in 24 hours so we can go hiking on Thursday.