Up a Huge High Mounting

Merry Christmas everyone - Jack and I will be showing you our Chrimble Day in another post.

Just for the monument you'll just have to catch up with Colorado.  Life - his not mine - got in the way of getting around to this - no priorities I aspose. (Sorry bear, I'll try to keep up honest.) Humph, just see that you do.

Well ANYWAY we reached our lovely bed and breakfast in Colorado Springs late on Thursday and wondered what to do.  We thought about going up Pike's Peak on the Friday or the Saturday, until Alan noticed that Saturday would mean the "Santa Special" whatever that means, but that sounded fine to me.  Somehow the humans thought that a bad idea 'cos it only goes half way up the hill and they wanted to go all the way up. So Santa was ditched and we went on the Friday instead.

Before we went we had to look at the mounting from the end of the street.  It looked high, and even higher when he said that we were already at over 6000ft (1900m) and the top is at 14110ft (4328m).  So I said, "Hey that's a LONG way up, how do we get there? What's this special and the not special."  "Well," he said,"we could walk." Now, I thought, "How long have we got?" and, "My wee legs would be worn to stumps." So I folded my paws, looked him straight in the eye and said, "You have to be joking." He laughed and admitted that he was, and said that the special and not specials were trains.  Phew what a relief, though he says he does want to walk up it sometime.

Here are the trains, they're pretty red carriages, though as we were about to leave our kind conductor, Darrell said that the journey lasted over an hour and there were "NO BATHROOMS" and that somehow caused a stampede among the humans. It was a sedate journey up and good fun with Darrell telling us all about things on the way.

Here I am at the top with Colorado Springs way down below.  This was the first of some COLD, no BLOOMING FREEZING BOT moments. It was -18C or -1F in old money and pretty chilly though very pretty looking.

Here I am just plonked down beside the snow with all the other hills and the Black Forest behind me.  That's funny, I thought that the Black Forest was in Germany, but apparently they've got one in Colorado too.

Nothing would do but he had to get in the picture.  You can see that he was well wrapped up. (You bet. I had a long sleeved merino base-layer, two fleeces and a windproof jacket on and I was still quite chilly.  I don't have your fur I'm afraid.) Well I can tell you I wished I had some of those on, but I did get to snuggle down in his front pocket and that was quite good. Can you see me sitting there beside that big lump. (Excuse me?) Well, you are MUCH bigger than me so you must be a lump.










I think that this is the highest I've ever been without a nairyplane, and I liked the pretty sign with the snow on the top.

Soon we got called back to the train and before we went down I went and met our friend Darrell the conductor. Isn't he a very nice man.

 Here is the view from the train on the way back.  Way in the distance is Kansas and we could see other states from up at the top, but he's forgotten which ones.

At the bottom was Manitou Springs, a lovely wee town and we said we'd be back, but you'll just have to watch out for the next instalment for that.

Hugs,

Jock