Hello! I filled y’all in on how our wedding went down in my last post, so the next post naturally has to be our honeymoon 🙂
Where
The first question most people ask is “where’d y’all go?” So that’s where I want to start. The easiest way to describe the place is by simply saying that we went to Colorado Springs. However, we didn’t spend very much time in Colorado Springs at all! We went all over the area.
One of my favorite things about our honeymoon was where we stayed. Rather than staying in a hotel or AirBnB or something, we found a cabin in the mountains in which to stay. We booked through Colorado Mountain Cabins, and we stayed in #24, Aspen Glen. It was absolutely beautiful! We had a ~900sf cabin — tucked away in a grove of aspen trees, complete with a deck & hot tub — all to ourselves. Talk about a fabulous spot for a honeymoon!
Saturday
Saturday was busy day. We spent the morning getting married, and the afternoon was for traveling to our cabin and getting settled. Have a couple of scenic pictures!
Monday
I’m skipping Sunday because we didn’t leave the cabin. Turns out, traveling and getting married is a bit exhausting! Monday is when the adventures really began.
Pikes Peak
Monday morning began like most of our mornings in Colorado did — with a gorgeous drive through the mountains! Everywhere we went was at least 45 min away from our cabin, so we got our fair share of scenery 🙂
No trip to Colorado is complete without a journey to the top of Pikes Peak! We decided to take the cog railway up instead of driving.
Manitou Cliff Dwellings
We came down from the mountain and headed into the town of Manitou Springs to explore over there. Our next tourist-y stop was the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. These incredible adobe structures had placards and info cards all throughout them (yes, you could climb through them) describing what different features were used for, like the fire pit being used for ceremonies and rituals. The craziest part to me is that these dwellings were actually relocated to create this museum! Check out the history here.
Tuesday
Geocaching
One of Corey’s hobbies over the years has been geocaching. For the uninitiated, geocaching is more or less a global (and beyond – there’s a cache on the ISS) scavenger hunt. It started with physical caches – small, camouflaged containers – hidden in scenic, historical, or otherwise nifty spots. The hider uploads GPS coordinates, and the finders go search for them. When a player finds a cache, he or she signs the log. There’s more to it than that, including other types of caches, but that’s the gist. It’s easy to get into, with the advent of GPS-enabled phones, and it can be pretty cheap. Naturally, there’s a paid membership that gets one more features (like caches that only show up in your database if you’re a member), but you don’t have to go that route.
When we were planning our honeymoon, one of the things we decided to do was spend some time geocaching. It ended up being a great way to see some really cool spots we would have missed otherwise!
At that particular spot, we met some other folks who were looking for the same cache we were, so we teamed up and hunted together. They were fun to chat with, and she has logged more than 20,000 finds to date! Seriously impressive. I’m only up to 45.
Royal Gorge
The Royal Gorge was actually our main point of interest on Tuesday; we just took quite a while to get down there. By geocaching, we managed to turn a ~1 hr drive into a 4.5 hr adventure! Eventually we did get to the park, so we ducked inside for the views of the canyon.
Wednesday
Wednesday was another super exciting day! We drove all the way back up to Denver to record our marriage certificate! Yayyyy! We’re legal!! And those certified copies, whew! What a thrill ride!
I’m glad we took care of it while we were still in Colorado, so everything was nice and official and stuff, but I can’t say that it makes for the most exciting blog story. We did do some more geocaching on the way back to the cabin, and we found one that was under the baseplate of a transmission line pole, so that was kinda nifty I guess?
Thursday
Thursday was a legitimately cool day. We went to a cave!
Cave of the Winds
Cave tours are always cool (get it? Cuz they’re underground? I’ll see myself out). Jokes aside, caves are fascinating! I can’t imagine being one of the first people to explore a cave back when this one was discovered/opened back in the late 1800’s with just a lantern to light the way!
Friday
IT SNOWED ON THURSDAY NIGHT!! WE WOKE UP TO A DUSTING ON FRIDAY MORNING!! It wasn’t much at all, but I was quite excited.
Broadmoor Seven Falls
This stop was kind of funny. We get into the park to find a very well maintained “trail” – we laughed and said it was the nature experience for people in high heels and suits. It was pretty, but we could hardly classify it as a true hike, right?
Turns out the asphalt was just the warmup. The real hike started at the falls with approximately a million stairs! The video below was standing at the top, looking down.
Once we got to the top, you’d think we would enjoy the view and go back down, right? WRONG. We kept going!
Clearly I was thrilled. But, I’m glad we did.
Saturday
Saturday ended our honeymoon, since we had to fly back in the afternoon, but we had one last Colorado adventure before heading home. Walking with actual wolves.
Wolf Walk
We found this organization called Colorado Wolf Adventures that puts on these walks. Since we have an affinity for big dogs (see my Ireland and Bear posts), we couldn’t resist meeting actual wolves!
One of the things that the handlers mentioned is that wolves aren’t “trained” in the same way that domesticated dogs are. A domestic dog actually looks for his human’s approval and support for what he’s doing. That’s why we can teach them tricks and commands. They crave our affection (some breeds more than others, and it varies from pup to pup, but in general), and they rely on us for support.
Wolves, on the other hand, don’t give a flying flip! They don’t need us to feed them; they’re more than capable of hunting for themselves. In fact, when we got going on our walk, one of the things the handlers said was if Spirit or Apache got on a trail, let them sniff it out and hunt. Killing things is their version of a milkbone – it’s a reward. And as far as our approval? Pssh. Wolves don’t care. They’re wild.
Anyways, if you’re still with me after this extra-long trip post, thanks for reading. We had a blast on this vacation, and we’re looking forward to our next adventure!
Until then,
Aiden
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