10 Year Anniversary Trip: Colorado

We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on July 30th. How in the world have we already been married that long? It seems like just yesterday we had our wedding. Then we blinked and here we are.

When we started planning our 10 year anniversary, we were gonna go big. We had planned an Alaskan cruise in the summer so we could see the glaciers on a balcony room. But alas, COVID19 hit, and cruises were suspended. And while they are somewhat back in business, it was too late, and we weren’t qualified to go anyway. So we started looking for something else. The US offers so many options when it comes to travel, and one thing on my bucket list is to go to Glacier National Park. So we started planning that trip, but there were NO places to stay during our dates. We really couldn’t believe it. Plans kept falling through, and we finally just decided to go to Colorado. We love Colorado. We’ve been there many, many times. But this time we decided to do things we’ve never done before.

We once again planned the trip solely on credit card points—we’d been saving them ever since our Europe trip. We booked our flights, and a week before we were to leave, we got Covid. Womp, womp. The trip was postponed. But we got flight credit, and instead of having to fly out of Tulsa, we could fly out of our local airport for even cheaper. Yay!

Traveling while leaving the kid at home was different for us. It was like packing for 3 people instead of just 2, but we did it. This is the first trip that we’ve ever left him for that long. I was a little nervous to leave him, but I fully trusted both sets of grandparents to rock the babysitting gig. I’m so grateful that we didn’t have to worry about them.

Tyler had never been to Colorado in the summer (other than when he traveled to the Denver office for work—and that does not even count). So we decided to make a road trip of it (after we flew to Denver).

Flying was exactly the same with the exception of now having to wear a mask. But all other regulations were just that. We flew out of our little local airport and directly into Denver.

C O L O R A D O  S P R I N G S

The view outside the front door of our hotel on Sunday morning.

We drove down to Colorado Springs from Denver, after stopping for a very late lunch. We checked into our hotel since we stayed up by the Air Force base. Then we decided to head down to Garden of the Gods. I was surprised at how hot it was in Denver and Colorado Springs. I was hoping for cooler weather, but at least we didn’t have much humidity.

On Sunday morning, we got up and headed to Pike’s Peak. I’ve been up Pike’s Peak several times, but every time, my dad or someone else was driving. I didn’t really want that stress on us, as I knew that we would be driving a lot later. So we decided to take the newly revamped Cog Railway up.

For reference, Colorado Springs sits at approximately 6,000 feet above sea level, and Pike’s Peak is over 14,000 feet. It was a climb. It took about an hour to get up to the top, and we had 40 minutes to look around. They just built a brand new visitors center up there, which was nice! It was rather chilly, and I’m glad Tyler and I packed our “Switzerland coats” for this excursion.

The trip down was a little longer than the ride up, and gratefully so. I did not want to be rolling down the tracks at a high speed. Haha. At this point in the trip, the ascent to that elevation really affected me. My head was pounding, and while I had already consumed over 60 oz of water by 10 am, it did absolutely nothing for me. My head hurt so bad that I thought I was going to throw up. I couldn’t really even tell Tyler what I wanted for lunch. I just wanted to go lay in bed.

He was gracious about it, and I did just that for the rest of the day. I felt better after a little nap, but my head was still pounding. I will say, this was the only headache I had on the entire trip, but it was sure a doozy.

Monday, I got up feeling a lot better and we headed onto Cañon City. But I’ll share more about that in the next blog entry.