"Westward and Bound"

Sunday, July 6 10:40 am

I've got to start making these shorter, or I'll never have enough time to get through them.

Yesterday, we had a leisurely start (slept late to make up for our long haul yesterday), and then got started on our first real day of sightseeing together - Garden of the Gods, Air Force Adademy, Golden CO, and the Coors Brewery.

GOTG is as breathtaking as ever. It makes for such a perfect launching point for the canyonlands. Big enough to be worth the visit, but small enough that it only whets the appetite for what is still to come. They had moved the visitor center across the street to a nice new facility with probably the best view possible of the kissing camels and Glen Erie canyon (we tried to tour this also, but it was closed for the weekend retreats).

To my eyes, the Air Force Academy hadn't changed a bit. The Cadet Chapel there is still striking and majestic, there is nothing else like it. There were weddings queued up one after the other for Saturday afternoon, so all we could do was peek in the chapel's door in-between two of them, but we were able to enter the Catholic, Jewish, and Buddhist temples.

On into Golden, but we were too late for the brewery tour. We settled for a walk through the downtown, pictures of the mountain stream running into the plant, and a cold one at a watering hole that appeared to be owned by the plant.

We got the earliest entry into a campground so far, so Lee was able to cook dinner, and Kate, Scott, and I were able to do our first rounds of laundry. The facilities were extremely nice and clean here, so it was a good time to do it.

This morning, we've had another slow rise, not that we slept late, but we finished up the laundry, had a bacon and eggs breakfast, and took care of the RVs plumbing needs. And in a particularly refreshing turn, the plumbing needs of Kate and myself also resolved themselves. Ah, the camping life!

Today, onto Boulder!