Colorado Springs Autumn

I went to Colorado Springs on a business trip, and I had the chance to visit two places there. The first one was the Broadmoor Seven Falls, which is a series of seven cascading waterfalls of South Cheyenne Creek in South Cheyenne Cañon. It has been a privately-owned tourist attraction since it was opened in the early 1880s. My Space Symposium was in the Broadmoor hotel area and luckily I could visit the falls on Sunday before the symposium started, because they closed it during the week of the symposium.

I had to climb 286 steps all the way to the top to see the whole valley from above, and the scene was spectacular. The weather was hot in September but it was dry heat, so as long as I stayed in the shade it was quite nice in spite of the 95 degrees Fehrenheit. I enjoyed the exercise of climbing the stairs which I needed badly after hours of sitting in the plane from San Diego to Salt Lake City in Utah, and then to Colorado Springs, Colorado. The thing that was toughest in this trip was having to wear a mask all the time in the airports as well as in the planes. It makes you feel suffocated. I was hoping that since I was fully vaccinated I would not need to wear masks anymore but unfortunately that was not the case. Inside the parks in Colorado Springs, however, the places were mask-free which was nice. The second place I got to visit the day I was leaving was the Garden of the Gods, a park comprising 1,300 acres of sandstone formations from 260 million years ago. This park offers a visitor center and hiking trails.

I had to go early in the morning at 5 am, which was the time the park opened, so that I would have enough time to get to the airport on time around 1 pm. I walked on the trails and saw the wonderful rock formations, and then went to the visitors center, which opened at 9 am and is free. It had some stuffed animals inside and movies about the park and how the rocks formed millions of years ago. It even had a unique dinosaur species that was discovered in that area. The picture to the left is outside the visitors center showing the rocks from far away. I had a good impression about Colorado in general as the people there were really nice and friendly. Colorado Springs is a small town and much quieter than Denver and Boulder.