Driving through the Garden of the Gods (a Colorado Springs city park that is truly spectacular) early Saturday morning gave us the idea of walking there early Sunday morning. So we did.
So as to beat the crowds and enjoy the best morning light, we got to the park around 6:30 AM and hiked a short loop trail through the very center of the best formations. As we walked past the North Gateway Rocks, Terry spotted a Prairie Falcon sitting in one of the holes. While that bird looked on swallows and rock pigeons dove and swooped all around. Wrens were singing and we even saw a spotted towhee in the brush. Numerous rabbits fed in the grasses along the trail undeterred by passing walkers and cyclists. It was only when the dogs (even on leashes) past them that the rabbits scurried into the brush.
Near the end of our walk, as we neared the Gateway again, we saw a falcon swoop from one hole in the South Gateway Rocks to another and then back again. How cool is that?
We finished our little hike and drove along the road to the Balancing Rock formation in the southwest part of the park. We got out and snapped some pictures before heading to the Trading Post (southeast) and then The Visitors’ and Nature Center (northeast).
It was still only 10 AM so we headed over to the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame where we spent an hour and a half looking at the displays and reading about rodeo champions of years past. Like the Baseball Hall of Fame, each inductee must be elected. There are human competitors, announcers, bull fighters (clowns) as well as the animal participants (bucking horses and bulls) inducted here. It's a very nice place to visit.
Since it was still short of noon, we drove up Route 24 to the Cave of the Winds. The road into the Cave’s parking lot is a twisty-turny affair that climbs at a very steep angle. We got to the top of the road and found a spot in the parking lot and walked into the visitors’ center. For $14 each, we took a short 45-minute tour through the cave. (We had to wait about that long for the tour to start so we got some lunch at the snack bar and enjoyed the view back down the canyon.) Being 500 feet above the canyon floor, these are one of the highest commercial cave systems in the world—and also one of the driest I have ever been in. The recent 10-year drought hasn’t helped much in the water department. All the formations in the cave are calcite and the water must have contained very few other minerals, as color is sparse. Temperature in the caves was just 54 degrees (as it usually is) yet some people in the tour group were “complaining” about how cold it was. There were stalactites from the cracks in the ceiling and a few stalagmites, lots of ribbon stalactites and a few spidery looking deposits that I haven’t seen elsewhere that the guide called cave coral. The rooms were smaller than in some caves we have visited with the largest only some 30 feet square and maybe 20 high. Terry noted that this cave had more low passageways than we have seen in others. She even had to duck for a few of them.
After the tour, it was time for us to head back to the trailer but first we had to go to Safeway to pick up some deserts for dinner at Joyce’s.
Joyce owns about five acres at the very base of the Front Range just north of the Air Force Academy. She enjoys some spectacular scenery from her deck but even more she has many wild neighbors who enjoy her hospitality. As we walked up the steps to her deck and front door we couldn’t help but notice the 8 hummingbird feeders attached to the rail of her deck. Nor could we miss the constantly darting birds feeding on the sugar water from these feeders. At six o’clock it seemed incredibly crowded but we were told, “Just wait until twilight then you’ll see a show!”
Outside her kitchen and dining room windows you could see two or three feeders containing seed for the other birds in the area and there were quite a few of those. Cowbirds, scrub jays, black-headed towhee and spotted towhee were all present while we were eating and then they gave a squawk and flew off as Mooch showed up. Mooch is a red fox that has been coming to Joyce’s back door for around three years. He gets a literal handout of hotdogs and cheese, taking the offerings right from Joyce’s hand. It is actually amazing that he still trusts her enough to do this. Earlier this year he showed up with a torn lower eyelid having gotten into a fight somewhere. Joyce arranged to have him trapped and taken to a vet to get stitched up. Once released, he didn’t come back to the house for two or three days but then, apparently he missed his hotdogs and cheese and started showing up regularly again. Tonight, while Terry and Patty looked on he gently took his hotdog and cheese handout and trotted off into the brush.
After dinner, as the sun settled down behind the mountains, the drone of the hummingbirds increased and we went out on the deck to view the show. Each of Joyce’s feeders has six stations; she has eight feeders; that makes 48 feeding stations. Every one of those stations had a bird on it and at least as many birds were zipping around looking for an opening or chasing someone off a station so they could feed. There had to be a hundred hummers flitting around totally unconcerned about our presence (except to investigate Annette’s red fingernails). Each bird was only concerned about getting enough food to make it through the night and to heck with anything else. Almost all of the birds were broad-tails (they look a lot like our ruby throated back east but they are ever so slightly larger) but there was one little rufous sided bully that crashed the party. For twenty-five or thirty minutes this continued, then, as if someone flipped a switch, they all disappeared until tomorrow.
Now that they were gone, it was time to take in the feeders. She used to leave all the feeders out over night but last year a bear showed up and climbed up the stairs to her deck to feed on the sugar water, sooo…. First the seed feeders went into the closet. Then the eight hummingbird feeders came in and were drained (she saves the newest mixture but discards the older ones—it ferments in the sun), rinsed and set in their container until the next morning when, at 5 AM Joyce would again refill them and hang them out for her company.
Not too long after the birds left, we headed back to the campground anticipating the 4th of July that was to come.
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