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| The "greatest" waterfall in CO. |
Our first anniversary weekend activity was visiting the famed Seven Falls water fall here in the Springs. This is the place that is advertised all over town on billboards, in magazines and newspapers, and is touted as one of the "must see attractions in Colorado." Not wanting to miss out on one of the greatest attractions in the state and also wanting to cross it off our do-before-leaving-Colorado list, we headed over there on Friday afternoon. We paid the $12 a person entrance fee and headed up into the Cheyenne Canyon where Colorado's largest waterfall is located. The canyon is made of beautiful red rocks surrounding you on all sides, and as we climbed up into the canyon we drew closer to .... a water fall. There was water falling down some rocks. Yea it was a fairly tall waterfall, but i have to say that I have a particular memory from childhood at the Washington D.C. Zoo where I saw an elephant peeing, and there was more water flowing there than at this waterfall. Yea, it was pitiful. There was a nice hiking trail that went up around it and climbing the 500 stairs to the top was cool, but I have to say that we were thoroughly unimpressed.
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| Approx. 2,000 ft. below the summit (and yes, there is ice on that lake). |
The following day we drove up North to Mt. Evans, a 14,265 ft. mountain which happens to be home to the highest paved road in North America. The weather wasn't the best with scattered rain, but we decided to make the drive up anyway. The road was nice with beautiful views at all times. The terrain changed as you gained elevation, going from pine forest, to open grassy plains above the treeline, to rocky tundra, and ending with nothing but rocks and snow up at the summit. Yes, snow. In June. It was actually snowing at the summit and was somewhere between 32-35 degrees at the top. You couldn't see a bloody thing from the top of the road because we were basically inside a cloud. The last few hundred feet of elevation to the summit you have to make by foot, so I persuaded Sarah to get out of the truck and we started climbing to the top with a snow storm coming down around us. A few hundred feet up the trail, I hear a yell from Sarah behind me and turn around to see her hair sticking out horizontally. "I can feel the static in the air... this is freaking me out...I'm going back to the truck!" But I really wanted to reach the summit, so I pushed on. a few minutes later I began to feel the static in my hair. I begun to get a little worried and stopped. Then I began hearing a buzzing sound in the air and coming from the rocks, kinda like the sound of a power transformer at a power plant. Thats when I got freaked out. I thought about how I'd really like to avoid being the guy they talk about on the news who got barbecued by lightning on top of a mountain. So I turned tail for the truck in pursuit of my wife. We were able to eventually make it to the summit after waiting on the storm to pass, and made it safely back off the mountain without getting fried.
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| She's not so sure this is a good idea... |
It's now Sunday, and having decided that getting up to 14,000 ft. was a lot of fun, we pursued another activity that got us almost as high. Only this time we would be getting down a lot faster than when we were up on the mountain. We decided to go skydiving! This is something I have always wanted to do, and Sarah mustered up the courage to suggest that we go as our anniversary present. We decided to go tandem (where you are strapped to an instructor) for our first time to avoid any fear-related issues. We got a quick crash course on what we needed to do to have a successful jump, donned our harnesses, and headed for the plane. Now I had pictured a decent sized plane where we would walk to a door and jump out , kinda like you see in movies. Nope. We were greeted on the run-way by the smallest puddle-jumper plane I have ever laid eyes on. This thing is tiny. As I'm trying to figure out if this thing can even get my big butt off the ground, my instructor ensures me it will be alright and tells me not to make any comments on the size of the plane as the pilot tends to get upset about it. So the 5 of us pile in, and take off down the runway. We had a nice scenic tour of southern Colorado as we climbed up to 8,000 ft above the ground (13,500 ft above sea level) and prepared to do the most ridiculous thing I have ever done. Jump out of a perfectly good airplane. That's not something people normally do. But the door opened over the drop zone and our instructors threw us out of the plane, Sarah first with me right behind. We free-falled for about 25-30 seconds, reaching a speed of 130+ mph (my instructor says him and I were going 'bout 160 mph since the two of us together were about 425 lbs.) before pulling the chute. We then enjoyed a few minutes of gliding around on the parachute before making safe landings in the landing zone. It went by super fast, and truth be told, we don't remember much of it. They say you experience sensory overload the first time and so your mind doesn't retain much of the experience. But from what we do remember, it was insanely fun and the most exciting thing we have ever done! Definitely something everyone should do at one point in their life.
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| This plane is so small!! I think i felt safer jumping out of it than I would have trying to land in it |
We ended the exciting weekend on Monday with a relaxing drive up Pike's Peak (another 14,000+ ft. mountain), some fishing at a mountain lake nestled along the road up Pike's Peak, and a romantic diner at Red Lobster that night. It was a weekend to remember, and exactly the way I wanted to spend celebrating a year of marriage that has been filled with love and adventure with my beautiful wife. I am so proud of her for being courageous and going skydiving with me! I pray that God would bless us with another year together and that it would be half as fun as this past year.
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