Day Four - Pike's Peak

We headed out this cold morning to Pike's Peak.  We thought about riding the cog train to the top, but that idea changed when David reminded me of the last time we rode a cog train to Mt. Washington.   It was like being jerked to death!  We decided to ride.

We reached the entrance to Pike's Peak and were "rewarded" with the news that it had snowed the night before and the last three miles were blocked by snow.  The snow plow was working and the road should be cleared in about an hour and a half. Since it takes while to drive the 19 miles, we decided to go ahead and take our time going up and hope it would
be cleared by the time we got there.

First stop:  scenic photo:














Coming in we saw this sign:

There we saw a footprint!

 I should have put my foot in the photo so you could see how big it really was!

It wasn't long before we saw BIGFOOT!  Hard to believe he has blue eyes!

Onward and upward!  We've managed to kill a bunch of time and were in a store when we got word the road to the top was open.  We were on our way!

Lots of snow!

More snow!

Where does the road go?

Cog train at the top

Notice the elevation!  14,100 ft.

Surrounding mountains

We went inside the cafe/gift shop to enjoy the doughnuts they offer.  Since the altitude is great, they can't make doughnuts like they are done at lower altitudes.  THEY ARE GREAT!  I enjoyed them so much I forgot to take a picture of them.

I've already been having problems with the altitude, but now it's really getting bad.  I can't breath, my head is killing me and I'm staggering around.  Something not good when it's all snow and ice covered.  We decided to head back down.  It's not as much fun on Pike's Peak now that it's all paved and has guard rails....

We had several people pass us riding down on bicycles.  They take the bikes up by van and they ride the bikes down.  However, we did see one guy pedaling up the mountain.  Not me!

We spotted this cute fellow on the way down.

By the time we got to the bottom, I began to feel better.  It took a while for the headache to go away, but being back down to only about a mile high made my head feel better!

Neither of us were up for dinner, so we turned in early.  Garden of the Gods tomorrow!

There's something better down the road!

Jenny :)