Life on Grandma's Hill: Pikes Peak & Garden of the Gods-Day 3

Today we left Garden City, KS early this morning. Barely made it out of town as the sun was rising. Soon we were in.......

Colorado, and just realized that we had changed time zones. So by leaving early we made up more time than we thought. After 3 more hours of driving we saw our first peek at..............

Pikes Peak. We went and checked into our room and dropped the top on the Pony and headed up.......

Pikes Peak Highway

The drive is just breathtaking with all the views. It is a 19 mile drive to the summit. At the entrance gate you are already at 7,800 ft of elevation. The climb to the summit is another 6,315 Below you can see the road that we had just climbed.

Here and there you could see small lakes. I hate it for Buddy because he didn't get to see near as much as I did, because he was concentrating on driving.

When we started out at the bottom the temperature was in low 80's and at the top it was probably in the 50's. Yes we look crazy with our sweatshirts and flip-flops, but it was cool. When you first stop you are really dizzy and takes you a minute to get use to the high elevation. The couple that took our pic drove their bikes up the whole way. Said it took them 5 hours. All I can say more power to them.

It was starting to get cloudy when we made it to the top, so the pics are pretty hazy.

Patches of snow that had been there from last winter.

All I can say, these people are crazy. Yes it dropped right off where they were and nothing to catch them. It was climb and walk at your own risk.

Time to go back down.

Since I was also videoing it was hard to get the best picture of the switchbacks, but this one is pretty close to what the road looked like from the top all the way down.