Last Friday, as I think I mentioned was planned, I went to the zoo with an EverQuest friend from Canada and her family.\u00a0 That was the start of a truly Awesome Day.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I left the house a little after ten, as I was supposed to meet them at the zoo at about eleven.\u00a0 The zoo is on the side of a mountain, so the entrance is at the top of a hill.\u00a0 Well, not the top<\/em>, really, but it is<\/em> on a mountainside so there’s a significant climb to the entrance.\u00a0 Somewhere past the one mile marker to the zoo, a car passes me by, honking.\u00a0 It’s my friend and her family, who I had hoped to be ahead of, but even though I was pretty early, they were earlier.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My friend brought her friend from a Denver suburb, Aurora.\u00a0 Said friend–I’ll call her Aurora–paid for everyone’s<\/em> entrance into the zoo.\u00a0 That meant my EQ friend (I’ll call her Kile), her husband (we’ll call him Dragon), her two kids (Sci and Frenchy), herself and me.\u00a0 That came to over a hundred dollars, so it was not a cheap deal.\u00a0 Kile and Dragon tried to object, but the deed was done and we were in for free.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We fed giraffes.\u00a0 We got to see a lot of different animals.\u00a0 The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo–one of only two mountain zoos in the U.S. and the other one is in the hills…er, “mountains” of Virginia–is an amazing place.\u00a0 The animal’s habitats are as natural as they could make it.\u00a0 Sure, it could be better for them, they could really<\/em> be in their natural habitats, but none of the animals seemed unhappy.\u00a0 The tiger we saw liked to pace a bit, but perhaps he was just trying to figure out how to get to the snacks–us humans–who kept walking by.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We finished our zoo visit by taking the “Sky Ride”–something like a ski lift but without the skis, ski slope or snow–to a high point on the mountainside and back down again.\u00a0 No animals up there, but there was a nice view.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After the zoo we were all hungry, so we went (on my recommendation) to a place called Meadow Muffins.\u00a0 This is a tasty place on the west side of town.\u00a0 I am happy to note I beat my friends there on my scooter and I pegged my speedometer going down one of the hills on the way.\u00a0 That means I was going about forty-two, which isn’t fast but I rarely manage it on my little putt-putt-putter.\u00a0 Everybody liked their food and the atmosphere was interesting, so it was a good choice.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Next we went to the Garden of the Gods.\u00a0 We got out and walked around one area, marveling at the rock climbers and the beauty of the area.\u00a0 I then led them to a good picture-taking place and then to the Balanced Rock, where more wandering was done and pictures taken.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We then went to Manitou Springs.\u00a0 Technically, it’s a suburb of Colorado Springs, but it’s different enough from Colorado Springs that it’s really hard to classify it as a part of the town.\u00a0 Mostly, it’s a tourist trap, but a good one.\u00a0 Lots of good souvenirs.\u00a0 Everybody<\/em> got something, including myself.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Finally, we went to the Colorado City Creamery, a tasty ice cream shop.\u00a0 Old Colorado City, where it’s located, is sandwiched between Colorado Springs and Manitou Springs and is a good blend between the two.\u00a0 More like the latter than the former, but still a bit of a blend.\u00a0 The ice cream was good and we sadly parted ways afterward, an Awesome Day behind us.\u00a0 And I had the sunburn to prove it!\u00a0 I knew I was going to burn, but after the amazing, funtastic day we had had, I really didn’t care.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Of course, there were other things which happened during the past week.\u00a0 Nothing compares to that day, so I am going to leave it at that.\u00a0 See you tomorrow with a bit of poetry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last Friday, as I think I mentioned was planned, I went to the zoo with an EverQuest friend from Canada and her family.\u00a0 That was the start of a truly Awesome Day. I left the house a little after ten, as I was supposed to meet them at the zoo at about eleven.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":585,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}