Colorado Springs

Coming from the east, we crossed a long flat stretch of prairie with nothing to look at but grass and sky — and then, without much warning, the Rockies simply stood up on the horizon, with Pikes Peak rising white and enormous above the city of Colorado Springs. Lia said it looked like a stage curtain being drawn back. We had come mainly for one strange and famous place on the city’s western edge, but the mountain over everything set the tone the moment we arrived.

Garden of the Gods

Garden of the Gods is one of the oddest, most beautiful places I have walked. Great fins and spires of red sandstone, some three hundred feet tall, tilt straight up out of the ground where ancient rock layers were shoved onto their edge by the rising mountains. We went in early, when the low sun set the whole formation glowing, and followed the paved central path between the giants. Rock climbers clung to the tallest fin, tiny as ants. Behind it all, snow-dusted Pikes Peak framed the scene so perfectly it looked staged. Entry is free, which felt almost indecent for something this grand.

Pikes Peak

The mountain that watches over everything is Pikes Peak, and you can actually get to its 14,115-foot summit. We took the cog railway, a wonderful old-fashioned way to climb, the train grinding steadily up through spruce forest and then out above the treeline into bare tundra. At the top the air was so thin that walking a few steps left us panting and giddy, and the view ran for a hundred miles across the plains. Lia bought the famous high-altitude doughnut in the summit house, and we ate it laughing, lightheaded, watching clouds form below us.

Old Colorado City and Manitou

The city has a gentler, older heart too. We spent an afternoon in Old Colorado City and the neighboring town of Manitou Springs, poking through brick storefronts, sampling the naturally carbonated mineral water that bubbles up from public fountains around Manitou. Lia grimaced at the iron tang of one spring and adored the next. The streets here curl up against the foothills, all Victorian cottages and independent shops, and there is a slower rhythm than the sprawling city out on the plain. We finished with green chile at a corner cafe as the light went gold on the peaks.

Getting There

Colorado Springs has its own airport, though many travelers fly into Denver — about seventy miles north — and drive down Interstate 25, an easy hour or so with the mountains on your right the whole way. You will want a car here; the city is spread wide across the plain and its best sights, from Garden of the Gods to Manitou Springs, sit on the western edge against the foothills. The Pikes Peak cog railway and highway both climb to the summit, but book the railway ahead in summer. As everywhere in high Colorado, take the altitude seriously and ease into the heights slowly.