November 22: Garden of the Gods . . .
Read MoreHeather and I spent a lot of time meandering at Pikes Peak which didn't end until late in the afternoon. Even though we didn't have much daylight left, Heather still wanted to show me a little bit of nearby Garden of the Gods Park, a well-known public park in Colorado Springs.
Garden of the Gods Park is a public park that attracts more than 2 million visitors each year making it the most popular park in the city. The park's beginnings can be traced to the purchase of 480 acres of land by railroad executive Charles Elliot Perkins in 1879. Perkins fell in love with the place and originally wanted to build a summer home, but later decided to keep the land in its natural state. After his death in 1909, the land was deeded to the city of Colorado Springs specifically for the purpose of establishing a free public park. The city was subsequently able to purchase additional surrounding land which allowed the park to grow to its current 1,367-acre size.These rock formations were produced via geological processes I'm not familiar with and don't quite understand. The Cliffs Notes version is that the formations are sedimentary in nature, having been deposited millions of years ago. The uplifting forces that created the Rocky Mountains lifted the sedimentary beds vertically, and the process of erosion created the individual formations seen today.
The photos above and below actually show two different sets of peaks, one in front of the other. As near as I can determine, the deep-red formation in the foreground is known as Keyhole Rock and sits in front of the grey formation known as Grey Rock. A deep-red outline is clearly visible in the photo above.
We decided to check it out and were greeted by signage at the base of the rock. The marker on the left describes the geological processes I mentioned earlier, but in more detail. The center marker tells the story of Paul Goerke, a photographer who owned the land around the rock in the 1890s and charged visitors 25 cents for a portrait. The marker on the right describes the various wildlife in the area.
Seeing a crowd of people behind the rock lead us to believe a good photo op location stood at the top of that small hill. We climbed the hill to the back of the rock and waited for the crowd to subside. In the meantime, I got some more great shots of the surrounding area. The photo above looks southwest toward the sunset and the wonderful colors.
By this time, we were running out of daylight, thus putting an end to my picture-taking adventures for today. We decided to take a drive through the park before heading back to Greeley. Following Garden Drive from the Balanced Rock took us to the Juniper Way Loop which circled around the back side of Grey Rock that I photographed earlier. My Canon SX40HS is a great camera as a whole, but is somewhat limited in low-light conditions which causes the auto-focus to not cooperate at times, with this being one of those times.