Adventure Park

One of the big attractions of Glenwood Springs is the caves.  Big long story of how it came to be... and you get an adventure park.  We spent all day here.  We rode the gondola up.

Here are some pictures of the park.

Cavers Corner is the way to the cave entrances.  It is also the way to the swing.

Down this way is the 4D theater, kid rides and the lodge which has laser tag, the gift shop and the restaurant.

Over this way is the alpine slide, the zip line, a arcade shooting range and old time pictures.

First thing we did was the cave tour.  You can find that post under this one.  When we left the cave, Nate really wanted to ride the swing.  I let him.  This first picture of from the cave tour.  You can see how it goes right over the cliff.

We watched a 4D short movie and then had some lunch.  We spent a lot of time in the souvenir shop.  We wanted to get the kids something and couldn't decide what.

We went down the alpine slide and I was a little nervous. It was so cool!  I could have done that all day long!  It wasn't as fast as I thought and being seatbelted in really helped.

We did the maze and would have won a prize for doing it in under 7 minutes but we got stuck behind some kids and Nate didn't feel right about shoving them out of the way to go faster.

 We didn't do the zip line but if we ever go back with the kids, which we really want to do, we'll take them down.

It was a lot of fun.  When we first decided to come to Glenwood I told Nate that I didn't want to go anywhere that the whole time we would say, "I wish we had the kids with us."  We didn't do that but we do want to go back with the kids.

We stayed all day with just the two of us so I am sure that if we came with the kids they would love it just as much.  It was so much fun and we are planning on coming back.  Just not on the train.

Fairy Caves

There is a really cool story behind these caves but it is really involved and long.  There are some really cool pictures though and I'll just put captions on them for you.  :0)

We tried to take a lot of pictures of ourselves. :0)

The entrance to the upper cave.

Where the second owners barred up the original opening to the cave.

"Clouds"

 If you look closely at the picture below, you will see what the cavers call, "soda straws".  These ones are only about a half an inch long.  Our guide told us that it takes 100 years for them to grow an inch.

"Popcorn"

The opening that you would go down if you had gone on the wild cave tour.

On the left is the town, No Name.  Below is the highway and the Colorado river.

This is where you would come out on the wild cave tour.

This is the entrance to the lower cave.  They had to blast from the outside in to get to this cave.

Just some of the "Barn".

This is the cave fairy.  If you look you can see her standing on one leg with the other tucked up behind her.  Her arms outstretched and her head looking down.

"Brain"

"Cave bacon"  I thought it looked like a ribbon.

Here is some "soda straws"  Those skinny ones are probably over 18 inches long.  Now remember, it takes 100 years for just an inch.  Pretty cool, huh!

This is an active stalagmite.  It had a drop of water hit the top ever 5 seconds.  We tried to catch a picture of it but it was too quick for us.

See how far down it went.  We were on our way to the bottom of the cave to get to another room.

More "cave bacon".

Here is the hole into the "Kings Row".

Look at all this!  It was huge and just full.

"Elephant tusk"

The "Kings Row" because it looks like the back of a chess board.  The knight on the left, king, queen and the rook.

"King Kong"

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and next to her is a stalagmite and stalagtight that has turned into a callum since it has connected. 

"Romeo and Juliet" embraced on the left with their "Wedding Cake" on the right.  The guide said that in the winter they call it the "Christmas Tree" because...

"Santa Claus" is in the cave too.

I hope that you enjoyed looking at all the pictures of the cave.  It was so amazing to hear the stories and to see all of the things that the earth does with just a bit of water and minerals.

Honeymoon; Train ride

Nate and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary on July 2nd.  We wanted to do something big and so we have been planning on this trip since November.  We bought the train tickets, reserved the room and have waited for this week to come.

We got to the train station in Provo about 3:30 in the morning on Tuesday.  Our train was suppose to be there at 4:00.  We called to see if it was on time and it was over an hour late.  It finally came about 5:30 and we were off.  Nate would compare our ride to "Polar Express" seeing as that is the only train ride he knew. "Tom Hanks is very punctual" he'd say.  That is not what we had.

We got into Glenwood Springs around 2:30.  Isn't this picture beautiful of the train station, train and Colorado river.  And can I say, "Holy Amish!!!"  They were everywhere!  I started thinking we had walked into a different world.  Come to find out, they were all on vacation too.  Go figure.

This pool behind us is 3 football fields long and is a natural hot spring.  It looks so cool but we never went.  I wish that we had.

The bus system is free and we rode it to the local Wal-Mart and found these hats.  The picture is blurry because we are on the bus.  I called them our matchy-matchy hats.  Then I got carried away with the matchy-matchy we had.  :0)

Here is our hotel room.  We were suppose to have had the honeymoon suite.  We found out that an Amish couple had it next to us.  What!!!  It was still nice and just perfect for the two of us.