Colorado Springs: Wet and Wild and Beautiful!

We drove from Trinidad, CO to Colorado Springs in the rain and the rain has hardly let up in the four days we've been here...and we're expecting more! We'd hoped to spend our 10 day stay here hitting the many trails around this city but the muddy conditions have put a damper on that.

We're staying at Cheyenne Mountain State Park and, despite the weather, this park is gorgeous! The camping loops are terraced on the lower portion of Cheyenne Mountain. Our site has a view on one side that looks East towards the plains for at least 50 miles, and our view to the West is of Cheyenne Mountain looming above us. The park is exceptionally green and deer and turkey are abundant.

During a lull in the rain we walked the campground and stared longingly at the muddy trails.

These two seemed to be posing for the camera.

This young bunny lives under the stairs leading to our sitting area.

We had a doozy of a lighting storm early in our stay. From our site we could watch the plains East of Colorado Springs as they endured a deluge and dozens of lighting strikes for several hours.

Hans stood outside under very dark skies and actually caught a lighting flash in the distance....
while I watched from the safety of the RV with my heart in my throat!

Much later that evening the sky put on an unusual show at sunset.

One morning when the ground had had several hours to absorb the rain we ventured out on some of the 20 miles of trails at the State Park. The lower level trails were still pretty muddy in spots, but the higher we went, the better it got. The shoe clean up afterwards was worth the effort!

We saw a flock of at least a dozen turkeys.
We could hear their gobbles often as the trails meandered over the hills.

We managed to get in almost four miles before the skies darkened once again
and we hurried back to the RV as thunder crackled a few miles away.

There are lots of spotted towhees in the park.

One afternoon we stopped by the downtown visitor center and, leaving our truck in their free parking lot, walked to the free Pioneers Museum. The museum is located in the lovely old courthouse building and has displays about local history including a sobering tribute to the Waldo Canyon fire in 2013.

Former Colorado Springs courthouse, now the Pioneers Museum.

Colorado Springs was once a popular place to "take the cure" for consumption, or tuberculosis,
due to its clean air and average 300 days of sunshine per year.
These rules for tuberculosis recovery certainly apply to every day life!

We were impressed with all the art scattered around and how clean downtown Colorado Springs was.
Here, the bronze pig and Porsche caught my eye.

Following our downtown stroll we met up with fellow full timers Rick and Lenore. Lenore writes the wonderful Dancing Cross the Country blog and lately they have their hands full with their adorable golden retriever puppy, Honey.

There are quite a few breweries in Colorado Springs and Bristol Brewing happens to be fairly close to our State Park making it a perfect place for a meetup. On the day we visited they were releasing Cheyenne Canon Pinon Nut Brown Ale, a tasty brew whose proceeds were going to support new trails at Cheyenne Canon...Colorado Springs loves their outdoor recreation and so do we! Bristol Brewing has a neat venue, it's located in an old elementary school, kind of reminded us of the McMennamin's brew pubs in the Pacific Northwest.

Rick, Lenore, Lisa and Hans after tasty brews and eats, along with gypsy music at Bristol Brewing.

Family photo! Lenore and Rick with sweet five month old Honey.

Yesterday the weather got REALLY exciting! After raining all morning, we suddenly had 3 inches of hail in about 10 minutes. Inside the RV the sound was deafening, we were on the phone with my parents when it started and had to hang up because we could not hear anything other than the pounding on the roof! Fortunately the hail never got larger than pea-sized and we did not suffer any damage.

View from our doorway after the hailstorm!

Soon after it stopped the campground snow plow was hard at work,
this was about 3pm, the time of day when RV's are streaming in for the night.

The crazy weather isn't over yet. As I write this we are holed up in the RV, it is pouring rain and some hail, lightning is striking quite nearby, and snow is in the overnight forecast. It's scary exciting!