When we arrived, we discovered that nearly all sites at the campground except ours (#27) had expansive views over the city of Colorado Springs.
Ours had only a peak-a-boo view, but we had trees surrounding us and privacy, which none of the other sites had. It was a tradeoff, but one we happily accepted. The campground looks out over the city and also over Fort Carson, an army base. Reveille at 6:30 every morning was a bit annoying, but taps at 10:00 p.m. was sort of hauntingly beautiful. The sounds of the city rose up to the campground from time to time (sirens, etc.), which was definitely a first for us at a state park campground! We had also never stayed at a campground with full hookups before, and having the sewer hookup was a real plus since I could take regular showers as I got ready for the conference each day. No sub showers during this trip!
The campground had a variety of great facilities, including hiking trails (no dogs allowed, sadly) and an archery range. The husband brought his bow along, and he enjoyed the 3D part of the range the best. Since he wasn't attending the conference, he had more time to explore than I. He also did some mountain biking on the trails, which he said were very well maintained.
On our first day there, we managed to sneak in a little geocaching, but the weather was explosive! Off an on, all day and night, there were huge black clouds that rolled in over Cheyenne Mountain and blasted the campground. Torrential downpours, hail, and blasting winds were accompanied by dangerous weather sirens from Fort Carson, making us very happy to have a trailer to retreat to and very sorry for the campers in tents in the walk-in area.
We had an afternoon off together, and chose to spend that taking a long looping drive and geocaching along the way. We first headed down to Canon City, where the very scary highlight of the trip was a drive on Skyline Drive.
This reminded me of a time when we were driving through Escalante National Monument, on a similar very high bluff that dropped away on both sides of a one-car-wide road. Have I ever mentioned that I'm intensely afraid of heights? As we were slowly creeping along the road, with me gripping the sides of my seat as hard as I could, we kept reflecting on how the road had been built for $1200 by prisoners, and wondering why. It's like one long scenic pull-out -- it doesn't go from anywhere to anywhere, so it was clearly designed just to provide the views (and thrills).
From there, we headed to the Royal Gorge, which is a Canon City park. Along the way the husband found a geocache,
near a picnic area with a beautiful view of snow-covered Pikes Peak far off in the distance.
We were disappointed upon arrival at Royal Gorge to find that it was almost entirely a money-making operation. Although there was a viewing deck, it was impossible to get a view of the gorge from there without also getting a view of the visitors' building, walking bridge across the gorge, tram cars and zip-liners traversing it, and even some folks flying out over the gorge on a huge swing. Back up the road a ways, though, there is a picnic area and we were able to get an unobstructed view there.
We made a big loop on the way back, heading up route 9 and across 24 back to Colorado Springs. The remote towns connected by these highways were rustic and cute at the same time. Antelopes were everywhere, and there was even a herd of buffalo. It's obvious that some folks were living very much off the grid. We drove past a small town near the area the husband had fly-fished the day before, Lake George, and stopped to find a geocache at a historic cabin.
It was a long afternoon and evening of driving, but the scenery was glorious and it felt shorter because of the frequent geocaching stops. This sort of experience is why we love this kind of travel. Being able to get out of town and see the beauty in the more remote landscape charges our batteries.
So, back to the things that were new to us on this trip: a campsite with a sewer hookup, a campsite overlooking a city, attending a conference from the trailer, being awakened by reveille and, of course, all of the new places we explored.
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