Colorado Vacation: Day 6

So about that wildfire...in the news even today you will hear about several wildfires burning in Colorado.  I guess we were fortunate that when we were there, it was only one.  The smoke from the High Park Fire had settled into Fort Collins over our first night there, and we woke up the next morning, we could smell the fire/smoke inside of our hotel room.  We made the ultimate decision that staying in Fort Collins another night wouldn't be quite as fun as we had hoped.  We called and got a hotel room down in Colorado Springs a day earlier than planned to be far FAR away from the smoke.  I wanted to see some mountains darn it!


We decided that we would still drive out to Estes Park like originally planned, I kept being told it was beautiful up there and apparently the smoke hadn't blown that far west.  Woohoo!  Check out this pic from the drive there...incredible.

Estes Park was beautiful, a little kitschy though for my taste.  However, I dove right into tourist mode and called the Stanley Hotel to make reservations for the ghost tour!  Now that was fun!  It was a great tour, fun little "true" ghost stories, and beautiful views of the mountains.

After the tour, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed to Colorado Springs.  This was a fairly long drive, but it was still pretty beautiful.  Once we got through Denver, we could start to see Pike's Peak...man that mountain is huge!  Our first stop though, the US Air Force Academy!

The Chapel at the USAF Academy

We took a nice hike through part of the academy, and pretty drive through more of it.  It was huge, and in such a beautiful setting right at the foot of the mountains.  After a long day of driving, we were ready to relax.  We checked in to our hotel, got some Mexican food, and stayed in for the night.  We had a big day ahead of us on our last full day in Colorado...