Everyone was pretty slow going after our rowdy night last night. We slowly got our momentum going, fed the kids some cereal, changed a headlight in the van, loaded up the car, and we were off again. We've been looking forward to this next destination all summer.....Pike's Peak Cog Rail!
We pulled up to the Villas Motel in the early afternoon to unload our stuff and relax a bit before hitting our 4:00 train ride.
The boys were super excited....at the beginning.
I really don't know why we thought a 3 hour train ride after driving 5000 miles was a good idea. They were DONE after about 5 minutes.
Just an FYI for anyone visiting the cog rail....they have assigned seats on the train, and you don't get to choose your seat....so....what you see is what you get. Unfortunately, the rows of seats are set up conversationally each two rows, so you're either bumping heads with the person behind you or bumping knees with the row across from you. The other even bigger problem with this configuration is one of the rows gets stuck facing backwards, up the 25% grade and the other row faces forwards and gets to lean back in their seats.....guess which row we were assigned to? Yes, we had the backwards facing row, squished into 3 little seats since Carson is under 3 and free. Cole's skinny little butt kept slipping off the old wooden seats directly into the families knees on the other side of us.....for 1.5 hours!
It was a very, very challenging ride up the famous Pike's Peak Cog Rail. I wasn't able to take many pics because Carson was flailing on our laps, and hence, also kicking the knees across from us, and Cole kept slipping off his seat. I did manage to get a few in, though.
Very beautiful....I think....when we got to, we were 100% in the clouds....no view at all.
We had 30 minutes at the top to look around....unfortunately, being inside the clouds, you could neither see around not breathe because the diesel fumes from the train were unbearable under the cloud. It was like we were inside a garage with the car on....
Well, we went inside to eat some of the famous donuts....they did not disappoint! Yum, yum!!!! They were hot and homemade! It reminded me of the donuts we used to make in the fryer at my Grandma and Grandpa Williams house in Moscow, ID. All that was missing was cinnamon and sugar to dunk them in. YUM!!!!
They were not your everyday Dunkin Donuts, so Carson was not about to eat them, not one bite....little toot!
We had 30 minutes at the top, then had to take the 1.5 hour train ride back down. I was praying that there was a turn around or something where we could be facing uphill instead of downhill on the way back down.....there was NOT! We spent the next 1.5 hours wrestling Carson who was kicking the knees in front of him and holding back Cole's little tushy from sliding off the seat into the people across from him...except this time, we didn't have the small momentum of clicking up the cog to help us...it was all down hill, all gravity. I even had a hard time not sliding off of my seat. Eventually, about an hour in, the nice family across from us asked if Cole would like to squish in and sit on their side.
BRUTAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some locals pointed us to The Loop, a local Mexican restaurant in Manitou Springs. It was allright...I'd say on the same quality as Christina's back in Frisco. The kids were restless after the long train ride, didn't eat anything, and we ended up wrestling them again the entire dinner. Fun times....
After that we headed back for the motel room and crashed. I did get to finish my new Dan Brown book, Inferno, so that's a plus.
The alarm is set for 4:00 am....
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