| Had a bunch of things I wanted to see that first day, so after a short visit to the USAFA, it was a short drive south to the Garden of the Gods, or Ho3o’uu Niitko’usi’i in Arapaho. |
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| It seems to be a very popular park. There were many cars on the little two lane loop. |
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| I was able to get a parking spot at one of the small lots. There were not too many available. |
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 So apparently all of these horizontal wall-like formations are a result of erosion and glaciation of ancient mountains. |
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| The Garden of the Gods was given to the city of Colorado Springs in 1909 by the children of Charles Elliott Perkins in fulfillment of his wish that it be kept forever free to the public. At least that is what is written on a big plaque on one of the rocks. Perkins used to own the place. |
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| Paths wind through the massive formations. |
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| Not all of them look like walls. Some are more spire-like. |
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| I thought this is kind of the Furman Hall of the Garden of the Gods. If you know, you know. |
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| Someone can probably look at these birds and identify what kind they are. I am not one of those people. |
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| Oh, deer. |
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 The view
from the Visitor and Nature Center. |
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| My trips usually include ghost towns if
I can find them. Sometimes there is nothing to see other than an old
graveyard. That is what we have here in the Florissant Pioneer
Cemetery. Elevation at Florissant is 8,192 ft. |
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| The earliest burial is probably that of a child who died in 1874, but there are numerous unmarked graves with unknown dates. This one is Mary Berta, beloved wife of Galas L. Wilson. She was born June 6, 1864 and died December 1, 1885. |
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| I cannot make out the names on these graves, but the one on the left belongs to a girl who died at a young age of seven. |
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| Poor Roxy Shuemaker died a couple of months shy of her third birthday. She did get a fancy looking memorial though. |
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| John Horn and John Kropf have similar headstones, with a finger pointing upward just below where is written "Heaven is my home". I guess their families bought them off the rack instead of customized. |
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| This was not an intentional stop, but it was on the road I was traveling so I stopped. The Hornbeck Homestead is a NPS property, part of the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. |
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| Dating back to 1878, this is an original historic log home. It was locked up, so I could not go inside. |
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| The other buildings are historic but were relocated from other sites. |
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| There was no sign saying what this was. Some storage space built into the hill I would imagine. |
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