Micro-Vacation

Joel and I have been trying for months to put a vacation together for our family before this baby gets here. We considered several options including a two week trip to the Northwest to see my brother and a shorter, smaller vacation to the southwest portion of our own Colorado. To make a long story short,we've come to the conclusion that the timing is never going to be right for us to fit a vacation in this year!! I'm 4 weeks from my due date and pretty much tethered to the Colorado Springs area and Joel is in the middle of a 2 month training session at work and cannot get any time off until it's finished. So, a few weeks ago we decided to stay local, but to spend a little bit of the money we would have spent on a vacation doing a few of the grander things our area has to offer. We thought Memorial Day weekend would be a good time since we would have an extra day for fun!
Today was the beginning of our micro-vacation and we decided to go to Canon City (about an hour and a half from home) and ride the Royal Gorge Railroad. For those of you who don't know what the Royal Gorge is, it's kind of like our very mini version of the Grand Canyon. It's, as it says, a Gorge with a river running through the bottom and a huge suspension bridge at the top. As it turns out there is also a train that rides along the river at the bottom all the way through the canyon. We splurged a little (since this is a vacation after all) and we bought tickets for the dome car! In this car, each family had their own table and the sides and roof of the car are glass so we also had a fabulous view! We even got to eat lunch on the train!!!

Our sweet ride!

The anticipation just about killed him!

Finally on the move!



Can you stand the cuteness?

Being silly!

We were a long way down!

Rafters on the river. Maybe this will be our adventure next summer!

The Royal Gorge Bridge!

Comin' around the mountain! Do you see the rafters in the background?

Lunch time!!



I came prepared in case boredom set in .. this only lasted for about 5 minutes.

There was even an outdoor car that you could walk to. Joel took the kids out for a little bit and I stayed inside and put my feet up!!

The bridge from the outside of the train.

I had suggested to Joel that since we were only a few minutes from the bridge and since the day was still young maybe we should take the kids to the bridge when we got off the train. I figured it would be interesting for them and it is something that people drive from all over to see ... I'm the only one in the family whose actually been there and it was at least 12 years ago. So, we kind of filed that away to consider when it was time to get off the train. When the time came to consider, we considered that Joel is afraid of heights and I'm too pregnant to see the real beauty in it so we loaded the kids in the car and stopped at Sonic for a cold drink on the way home :)

Stay tuned to see what else we did on our Micro-Vacation.....

ATTENTION: Pregnancy update coming soon! I have an appointment on Wednesday and will give an update after that visit!