While the Cat's Away...(Still Spring Break)

Part of our Spring Break plans included a little getaway for Mom and Dad. We flew Grandma Joanie into town on Thursday morning to be our official babysitter. Jon had been working Monday through Thursday from basically 7 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. all week, and was completely exhausted by Friday. We'd long ago originally planned to fly to San Francisco for the weekend, then switched to Las Vegas, then decided on Winter Park, CO, but because we've got a few things (financially) coming up and in the works, we decided maybe a staycation would save us a lot of money and be the best in the long run. And no regrets we did!

So Denver and Colorado Springs it was! There is plenty to do around here, so just for kicks we started off with a matinee to see "Kong" (Jon's choice). The theater was pretty much empty, but had been fully refurbished with reclining leather chairs, and we had a blast sitting back and watching an "adult" movie with a theater all to ourselves, and since we're such high rollers we even got popcorn!

We hurried down to Colorado Springs for a quick lunch at Rudy's BBQ, which is fast becoming a favorite of ours. They have really good pulled pork, which is cheap and tastes just like the South.

I'd scheduled a tour of the "Cave of the Winds" which had been highly recommended as one of the top things to do in Colorado Springs, so we headed up the mountain to Manitou Springs and the scenery was breathtaking with the freshly fallen snow.

Cave of the Winds was discovered back in the 1860's, but of course had been used for thousands of years before that by the Ute Indians as an ancient burial site. There are so many ghost stories and fascinating folklore surrounding these caves, they are just wonderfully creepy and so beautiful inside! Even though it had been snowing off and on all day, the caves maintain a perfect 54 degrees year round. 

There are two tours-- a Discovery tour that lasts about 30 minutes and just basically takes you inside where it's all lighted by electricity, and the second which is a 90 minute Lantern tour which takes you about 1 mile into the cave to parts unknown. There is no electricity back there (obviously), and you have to crawl in some parts to get through the passages, but that's what we chose to do and it was seriously one of the coolest things I've ever done! 

Again, since all we had were kerosene lanterns, most of my pictures didn't really turn out, but the cave was haunting and beautiful, and extraordinary. Jon never got scared-- he said it reminded him more of Lord of the Rings and the dwarves, but I definitely didn't want to be last in line going through some of those pitch black tunnels!!

The "Giant's Heart" formation

We headed through that tunnel on the left and that was the end of the lighted part of the tour. The rest was pitch black-- in fact our guide said that the only other darker place on earth was at the bottom of the ocean. Thankfully neither of us were claustrophobic!

There were stalactites and stalagmites everywhere.

What they call "cave coral"-- it grows for centuries and is just beautiful! I won't go into detail about the ghost stories and various legends of the cave, but we had a natural born storyteller for a guide, and I pretty much had goose bumps the entire time. In fact, one of the girls on our tour passed out about halfway through, (seriously! so scary!), but not from fright. She'd just come from Chicago (basically sea level) to here, where it's nearly 7,000 feet in elevation, and we think it was altitude sickness. Of course it just added to the already freaky tour. We had an absolute blast though!

Out of the caves and breathing fresh air once again. We survived!

Next we checked into our room at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort. We took a little stroll out on the golf course to admire the sunset over Pikes Peak before heading to dinner.

I found a little German restaurant called "Edelweiss" that featured completely authentic food and had all German waitresses and workers. It was such a flashback to living in Austria for me! I tried the beef rouladen and rotkohl.  

It was decorated just like a hunting lodge in the Black Forest. Jon got the wienerschnitzel and loved it. You can see the NCAA basketball scores on his phone in the background, ha ha. We headed back to our hotel to watch the games and get some wonderful, blessed uninterrupted sleep!

The snow from the previous day had vanished in typical Colorado fashion, with sunny blue skies in its place. We lounged out by the pool and soaked in the hot tub before getting ready for the day. I could definitely get used to that!

My handsome little cowboy enjoying some R&R.

We headed back to Manitou Springs, which is home to the Cog Railway that travels up Pikes Peak. I've been dying to make it to the top where there are pristine views for days and days, but because of the snow they still weren't able to clear a path for the train to the top. We opted to check out the little downtown instead.

We found some amazing Middle Eastern food for lunch at a place called the "Heart of Jerusalem." Jon was thrilled because that just happens to be his favorite kind of ethnic food, and we hadn't really found any around Denver yet!

We headed over to some cliff cave dwellings, which the Hopi and Anasazi Indians used to inhabit for centuries before us white guys came and ruined it for them. Pretty fascinating how they built their homes right inside the cave for protection and defense.

An example of a pueblo home as well.

Looking out from inside one of the cave dwellings.

I think my kids would love this museum so we'll have to come back and explore some more.

We decided to finish our day up with a hike to the Seven Falls, which is right in the heart of Pikes Peak.

No joke, we burned off some serious calories with all those stairs! It was a steep incline, and we hiked up over 500 steps to get to the very tippy-top. 

This was Midnight Falls, which was another mile or so up the mountain. All in all, it was a lot of hiking but I'm glad we got to see such pretty sights along the way. 

Jon with "Devil's Thumb" in the background. It was around 5 p.m. that we finally hiked back down and to our car, so we loaded up and headed back into Denver, where we had a dinner reservation at Del Frisco's, a super fancy steakhouse Jon gets a gift card to every year for work.

Super fancy selfie in front of the restaurant because we are cool like that!

We had some serious money to drop with that gift card, so because we were being high rollers all weekend, we ordered 4 courses, complete with virgin Mojitos (or "mocktails") just for fun, and two kinds of shrimp cocktail for our appetizer.

Jon ordered an amazing Chilean seabass with fried rice, and I got the steak medallions with potatoes and haricot vert. I don't know about you guys, but I'm just as happy with my $10 steak + 2 sides at Texas Roadhouse, but it's fun to see how the rich feel every now and then.

My steak medallions. Yum. Our waitress brought us some chocolate mousse for dessert, for Jon's birthday, but I forgot to get a picture. We had a really good time reconnecting, playing around, exploring the sites, sleeping in, and eating lots of really good food. I hated that our date weekend had to be over so soon! Many, many thanks to my mom for being a good sport and taking on 4 kids by herself all weekend so we could go. Maybe we can make it a spring break tradition, Grandma Joanie? (wink, wink)