Colorado Springs - Garden of the Gods

After Red Rocks Canyon (and lunch), we rode our bikes back to Garden of the Gods this afternoon. It wasn't as crowded today, so we could walk some of the trails looping close to the rocks.
There are some interesting formations in the park: windows, baby arches, holes in the sides of the rocks (small caves), spires, etc. In this area there were warnings about the potential of falling boulders. We think we found some candidates...











The Balanced Rock formation is very popular with visitors. There are only 2 small sections of eroding grey sandstone that is still holding this boulder up. And I just love the coloring of the rock in this area. It's primarily red sandstone with purple and grey lines that run throughout it. Beautiful. Reminds me of Zion.









We did get on the mountain bike trails today. They were fun since they were a smooth surface with few rocks in the trails. The only problem was knowing which trail we were on (yes, again). We wanted to find a connector trail that would deliver us right into a neighborhood to get back to the campground, but we lost the trail around some big boulders. Perhaps we were supposed to bike down the boulders like in Moab? Not sure. We ended up back onto Ridge Road and went home that way...which is a fabulously fun fast ride down. It's just a shame there's that stop sign and a hard right turn at the bottom of the hill.