Skywatch Friday: Red Rocks Open Space

We went hiking at a new open space yesterday.  It was a beautiful 70 degrees in southern Colorado and the best thing about being an old retired couple is that you can go hiking in the middle of the week.

We took a look at the trail map and chose our route.  I always take a picture of the map in case we get lost out on the trails.   The one thing we didn't look at was the legend to see what each color trail meant.  We ended up going out on an intermediate trail and coming back on an advanced trail.

The Mesa Trail was a steady hike up for about 500 feet and that's why it's classified as intermediate.  I don't like hiking  uphill, but it's usually a necessity when hiking in Colorado.

The views were amazing.  That's the Garden of the Gods in the distance.

We even met some equestrians on the path.

The trail going up was a wide gravel path that maintenance vehicles could go up.

I'm one who prefers a meandering path through the forest, but I'll take whatever I can get on a day as perfect as this.

Then we got to our cutoff at the turn around and I got more of the single lane path I like.

The trails were marked especially well.  I always appreciate the trail markers.  Sometimes you just have to make your best guess if the trails aren't marked.

On the way back Irv was on the hunt for a couple geocaches.  I will say that the two caches he found were in somewhat precarious spots--you better have good footing.

Then we can across a guy and his equipment doing some serious trail maintenance.

I'm so thankful for the city park employees and volunteers who maintain our trails.  What would life be without them?

This is the location of geocache #2 for the day.  The hint said "keep hold of your kiddies" and we completely understood why.

Another view of the Garden.  You can see how really dry we are here.  The snowpack is at 78% of what it should be.  We're looking at another really dry summer.

The parks recently installed gates at the entrance to this open space.  Apparently a lot of stuff goes on here at night including graffiti on the magnificent rocks, campfires, and big parties in the parking lots.  I know there are a lot of car break ins at this particular park so leaving nothing of value inside the car is a must.  This isn't a place I would hike by myself even in the daytime.

Near the end we came across this little frozen over pond.  Some guy was flying his drone over it.  I don't know if that's legal or not and he wasn't bothering anyone.  Now if I'd been at Yellowstone with my ranger hat on I would have been hunting him down.  For anyone who doesn't know, it's illegal to fly a drone in any national park.

We went about 3 1/2 miles.  Thankfully, my foot that had surgery in October did great.  In four days I have surgery on the opposite knee so my foot is going to be doing double duty for a few days.

A 70 degree day in February is unheard of.  I'm so glad we got out to enjoy it before the next cold front blows through.  What do you like to do a beautiful winter day?

Linking with Skywatch Friday