Ready for another big day, we got up early to catch a Cog Train up to Pike’s Peak! A Cog Train is a train that is pulled by a gear called a cog; this rolls at the base and sort of pushes the train up.
You can see were the gear goes on.
We packed our stuff up and headed out! When we got there, we got some crushed pennies and walked over to the boarding platform. When it came, we boarded and it ended up that our seats were at the front!
The Train itself!
So we could see right out the main window and saw views and wildlife.
The view out!
We had someone who was doing a commentary and she told lots of jokes, every one laughed because they were pretty funny. Dad knew most of them and finished the punch lines. On out way up we ended up finding that there were lots of chipmunks running along the side and when we got to a higher altitude, it was really rocky and marmots were everywere.
A Marmot!
It was amazing! Marmots are similar to groundhogs, but a little smaller.When we got to the top, it was a little hard to breathe because we were so high and the air was thinner.
Us at the top!
We headed inside the little cabin at the top and they had world famous DONUTS! They were SOOOOOOOOOOOO good! And we also got some hot cocoa, which just went perfect with the donuts!
Cocoa and Donuts!
IN THE DONUT
We explored around the area and even found some snow!
SNOWBALL FIGHT!
I felt so good, but soon enough we had to get back on the Cog Train and head back down. I fell asleep on the way down which passed the time! When we were down, we got off and headed to Soda Springs Park in Manitou Springs. And the name is true; natural soda water came out of fountains! We ate lunch there and filled our water bottles with soda! We added a water flavoring to one and it made it taste like Cheerwine! It was really good. On the way to Twin Lakes, we stopped at Florissant Fossil beds National Monument. They had fossilized insects on display and redwood trees that were petrified wood!
Fossils!
Petrified Redwood Trees!
We saw about five of them but we did not have enough time to see the whole area because they were closing. So we continued to drive towards The Twin Lakes. We got there after about an hour of reading and doing math. We arrived at our cabin, unloaded our stuff and headed out to find the vantage point from the Picturesque America book. As we headed down the hill we ended up finding that we were close, so we kept heading down. But it started getting dark so we were not able to take the photo of where we thought it was. So we headed back up. It was a little loose ground on one hill and Elias, my brother, slipped and put his hands into a cactus! He had to walk back up without using his hands and when we had got back to the cabin, he had to pull the needles out of each hand with tweezers. We ate dinner of good sausages, rice, and veggies and went to bed.
Us at the Cabin