Sunday September 24th
It was another beautiful sunny day, the day when I had arranged to meet Shannon and her husband Bob. She had asked earlier what I’d like to do when we met up, and I wasn’t sure – I didn’t know if I’d be up for a hike after all the hiking I’d planned, but then she suggested they drive me to the top of Pike's Peak, which was 14,000 feet (4,300m), and that sounded like a pretty good idea. It would take a while to drive there and back, and so the idea was that it would be good to arrive at their place not too late.
I found a good sounding church not far from them, Redemption Parker, a non-denominational church which had a service at 9.30am. I drove out of the park, and explained at the gate that I’d wanted to get a pass for two days, but was directed to a closed park office, and offered to pay for two days then. But the person there just charged me for Sunday. Probably fair enough to get Saturday free given the run-around I’d had.
It was about 25 minutes drive from the park down to Parker, towards the far south of the Denver suburbs. The church met in a quite large cultural centre, with an impressive front. It was a good sermon and worship service. During the service, while the preacher was delivering the sermon, some deer came by the back window! I was met on the way out, I think by one of the people who was greeting people coming in for the next service, which was somewhere around 11.
From there it was only about 10 minutes drive to their place, which was in a new development. They could see out onto unbuilt land, which was nice. They came out and met me, and it was great to see them in person for the first time.
I got my things and we went off in their car pretty much right away. The trip to the peak was around an hour and three quarters. They were at the right end of the city to just keep going south to get to Pike’s Peak. We drove a good way on I-25, a 75mph four-lane interstate, till we got to Colorado Springs, then drove out to the road to the mountain. It was so popular that it was necessary to get a timed entry pass, but they had been able to get hold of one, so we went on through the entry gates, and up a steep winding road for around half an hour.
When we got to the top there was a bit of a line-up waiting for parking spots, which seemed strange since they had already implemented timed entry passes, presumably to stop running out of parking, but I guess they didn’t know how long people would stay around. We waited for our turn to get a parking spot, then got out and looked around. It was interesting being so high up, just walking around I felt a bit out of breath. There were a lot of people there, and a path going all around the summit, with a large visitor centre and the parking lot in the middle. There was snow on the ground beyond the pathways.
Apparently inside the visitor centre they sold donuts which were really nice, but we couldn’t get into the centre, as all the doors were locked. We found out from someone that there had just been an evacuation because of some kind of gas leak scare, and they had locked the building. Shannon greeted some people who had just hiked to the top (we took the easy way!), and broke the bad news to them. Shannon took some photos of me, and Bob took a couple of Shannon and me. Shannon offered a few groups to take their photos too.
There were sweeping views all around. It seemed amazing you could just drive to the top of a "14-er"!
We set off down again after a while. The descent was very steep, with a low speed limit, and even in first gear Shannon had to use the brakes a lot. Part way down the descent, at Glen Cove, there was a kiosk where people were checking the temperature of each vehicle’s brakes, and telling them to stop and let them cool down if needed. Shannon’s brakes were fairly hot, and they told us to park for 10 minutes before going on. We decided to stop for the facilities and have a late lunch there, which we'd had to postpone since the visitor centre was closed, and it was getting on for 3. There was quite a nice little cafe there, and we waited about 15 minutes for them to prepare our lunch, then ate it there.
Further down, we stopped by the picturesque Crystal Reservoir, with some lovely autumn trees and the mountains in the distance. From there we drove back to their place. As we were getting close, Shannon pointed out little animals, I think they were prairie dogs along the side of the road. I couldn’t see them at first, but as I looked out, I started spotting them.
We parted, and I drove back to Cherry Creek. My usual Bible study started at 6.30, and arrived back a bit before that, so I parked at a spot overlooking the reservoir and had a bit of a walk around there, then drove back to my campsite to have the Bible study – I was keen not to have to find the spot in the dark again!
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