Oh, Colorado, what a delightful state it turned out to be! While we haven’t spent much time there, it’s the place I want to come back and explore much more thoughtfully and deliberately.
If you remember, we just finished our exploration of parks near Moab and start driving to Colorado, with our first hotel stay in Colorado springs. That’s a long drive! Yet it would be a travesty to drive by Great Sand Dunes NP and not stop by that place. So we didn’t.
Great Sand Dunes turned out to be amazing! The dunes are really high, and the whole idea of having the highest sand dunes in the US in the middle of the mountains is kind of unbelievable! Yet there they were, very majestic and very inviting for the exploration.
However, given that we had a long distance to cover during that day, the most we could spare is one hour, just to come to the edge of the dunes, marvel at their beauty and imagine spending at least a day exploring, hiking to the highest ridge, take their vastness in….
By the end of the loong day we arrived at our hotel, Hyatt to the rescue, again! This time we stayed at Hyatt House, which was probably the worst of all Hyatt stays (not that horrible though as some other places I stayed over over the years) but had a kitchenette, which made it convenient to cook some food for my family (FYI, this hotel is now closed permanently, so I guess our perception of the quality of that hotel was not that off).
We decided to stay in Colorado Springs two nights so that we could spend a day exploring the Garden of Gods. And we did! Thunderstorms were expected in the afternoon, so we started our day with the hike at the Garden of Gods. It was nice, though it was crowded in the main area, which I did not expect given that we were there on Wednesday. But the park is large enough that as soon as you get further away from the paved area the people that you meet are far and between. Though you may also get some horse dang on the pathways, if you happen to take the path that is shared with horse excursions. My youngest certainly did NOT appreciate walking around the piles, and it spoiled his enjoyment of the park (and, consequentially, ours). Ultimately, though, we did spend half a day in the park, got a lot of steps in and had the magnificent views (including those of Pike’s Peak).
The thunderstorms did come in the afternoon, as promised, so the rest of the day was spent in the hotel, cooking (me), playing board games and watching TV (all of us).
Next destination – Glenwood Springs! That was an easy drive of about four hours, and the town provided a lot of entertainments for the two and a half days we spent there. The town is located in a canyon, which, in addition of having the great Hot springs pool, served as a setting for many outdoor activities, including hiking and river rafting.
The pool! Oh my god, the pool! First of all, it’s the largest pool in the world that is filled by hot spring mineral water. Secondly, it has two huge perfect sections, one is like a gigantic hot tub with the hot (104 degrees) water, and the other is a much larger pool with warm water (90-93 degree), ideal for soaking all day long any time of the year. It is also surrounded by the beautiful mountains, which makes the setting perfect.
If it was up to me, I would have lived in the pool. Since we had only two full days in the area, I started and ended every day in the pool, and going there if we had a break in our busy schedule. The pool was just too important to me, which is why I have chosen to stay at Glenwood Hot Spring lodge, where the access to the pool is included in the price. I knew that if we stayed anywhere else in the town, I wouldn’t be able to spend as much time at the pool as I wanted to.
The schedule though was very busy! On the first day we went to the Glenwood Springs Cavern Adventures park. The park is located on a top of the mountain, with the only access to it is by riding a gondola! Also, once there, the creators of the park definitely took the advantage of its location, placing many of the rides on the edge of the cliff, as if the thrill from the rides alone wasn’t enough! And then, to round up your experience up there, there is access to two caverns, so that when you are ready to take a break from the rides, you can have your breath stolen by the beautiful creations that the nature had been working on for millions of years.
The next day included two adventures. In the morning we went hiking along Colorado River in the canyon. The path has been paved for bikes, which made hiking/walking easy. We also got to witness how other people raft down the river, which is what we planned to later that day (adventure #2). Though since we were walking where Colorado river is calm, my husband got a wrong impression that the rafting would be boring, just floating down the river. Boy, was he wrong!
The rafting was anything but boring! Our reservation was with Blue Sky Adventures, from where we were driven up the river to the launch point, just above the category three Shoshone cascades. We had to carry down our rafts, were given instructions (row forward/backward/do nothing) and were sent down the river with a guide. The first few minutes (going through the cascades) were pretty intense, rowing hard at the instructions of the guide, getting seriously wet and desperately trying to stay in the raft. That was fun! And even though the most intense cascades were in the beginning of 9 river miles trip, the rest of the trip had alternating “quiet” floating sections and fun cascade sections, so we were never bored during our 2.5 hours on the river. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that when we returned home, we got ourselves an inflatable boat to go down river near our vacation house, which, while not as thrilling as Colorado river, offers enough of entertainment 🙂
I can certainly say that Glenwood Springs was the highlight of our trip and provided unforgettable moments for the entire family. It is certainly the place I would want to come back to and spend more time exploring the area.