Beer Garden of the Gods

Camping Friday night was a lot of fun; it was my first time at a KOA site and they’re really not so bad!  It was a “free day” there, so it was pretty packed with all the bargain campers.  Creepy couple next to us came to the site…I helped them set up their tent..they were in there for about a half hour, and then they packed up and left.  Wonder what they were doin’??

Then yesterday we stopped at the Beer Garden of the Gods in Coloado Spring!  I learned that when it was “first discovered” by europeans, the one said to the other somethin like “This would make a mighty nice beer garden!”  And the other replied “Yes, a garden fit for the gods.”  So they called it Garden of the Gods.  But it’s really the Beer Garden of the Gods.  So I think I’m gonna call it that from now on.  I think I’ll also correct others whenever they mention it.

The second I saw them, I was wondering “Wow, what’s the process that creates stuff like this??”  It’s just so beautiful and interesting, it was fun to think about.  I saw some paintings later in the visitor center that showed some snapshots of different periods, from billions of years ago, to millions, then thousands.  They’re created from erosion!  Like volcanic activity covered the area billions of years ago, plus the earthquakes and fault lines that created the rockies, and since then natural weather and rain erosion has carved out these amazing structures.  It made a lot more sense after that.

Since erosion created these rock formations, we couldn’t help but laugh when we saw a sign saying that “Recent wind and rain have destroyed and weakened this rock face! Please no climbing, blah blah blah..” haha… The thing that created them, now is seen by us to be destroying them.  This does mean that some day, the Beer Garden of the Gods won’t exist anymore.  We laughed at the thought of conservation groups in the future trying to coat all of the rocks in a polyurethane to prevent further “destruction”.  Then, no more minerals would run into the creeks, causing flora to disappear somewhere else, leading to some sort of animal and insect extinction. 

The last time my girlfriend or I had been there was from long-past trips with our parents from childhood, so it was interesting to see it from a new perspective.  The thing was, though, that like we remembered it being so much more fun before.  But as we were walking around it was just kinda…a bunch’a rocks.  That’s when I realized what it was: we were being too ‘adult’!

We were reading signs, and walking on the trail. Some signs were up asking you not to climb on certain formations because of reconstruction, or wear or whatever, and so we were leary about touching any of them.  The kids were all up around crawling on everything!  Actually, the group of Russians were into that, too. Usually in places were there were signs saying “no climbing/scramling!” but they had the language-barrier excuse goin’ for them.  The Japanese groups we saw were very reserved, too. Taking lots of pictures.  I decided that I had to be a little more all-terrain.

I started climbing around on this huge rock, and it was great!  The feel of porous rock really brought back some of the memories from being there all those years ago.  That’s when I started having all the fun.  I was climbing up on and around eveything I could find, trying to walk on the sidewalk as little as possible; it was a kick!  Jumping from rock to rock, climbing up, jumping down, running and jumping on to the next one.  The place was still fun, I’d just forgotten why.

So that was really cool. It was interesting afterwards to see all the people that were just walking on the sidewalk. It’s a nice walk, but so much more fun off the path!  The dogs on their leashes, following the sidewalk with their owners were kinda entertaining, too.  I saw a couple of escape attempts, and even this one dog that totally didn’t want to go home!  His owner ended up picking the big guy up and placing him in the car manually.

By the end of the trip when we checked out “Balanced Rock” I was jumping all around, kinda playing with some stuff like this thing called “parkour” which is some sort of french thing.  Check out the videos, it’s kinda neat! They sorta just go around running, jumping over obstacles and stuff. I wasn’t doing anything even NEAR as cool like them,  but got a neat idea of how it might be!  It was just a lot of fun to run and jump and climb and jump, haha.  Was a good time!

I think the idea of "balanced rock" is funny, too cause like...it used to be part of one structure, but now it's eroded and now we consider it it's own a "rock" . And since it's still connected, we think of it as if it were "balancing", but really...it's just all one huge mountain that's eroded that way.

I had a can of redbull in my “cell phone pocket” on the leg of my jeans, and it was interesting to feel it slosh around when I was just walking.  I wanna try to get pants where I can put a can of water on each leg; then I can practice walking more smoothly with none of it sloshing or spillin’!  I seem to have a lot of hip muscle tightness and stuff, and I’m thinkin’ it might have something to do with my jerky-walkin’.  Hmm…