Pike's Peak!

This past week was really awesome. My mom made a bit of an impulse decision to fly out here to come hang with me Sunday through Wednesday. My whole family had planned to fly out here for Thanksgiving but I think she just got a little antsy and had to come see me. When she got in on Sunday we went to some really cool restaurants in town and then on Monday we went into Manitou Springs to explore. Manitou Springs is a really cool little mountain town with a bunch of little shops and a penny arcade. On Tuesday I showed her around Garden of the Gods and some other areas and we went out to dinner one last time before she had to leave Wednesday. I originally had plans to go on a really long hike to see a haunted and abandoned powerplant on Saturday with the outdoor recreation crew that went sand boarding last week. I was still planning on going until I got an invite from a couple of guys in the cycling club here to go mountain bike down Pike's Peak all day Saturday. Although I really wanted to do the power plant hike, this was a ride I've been looking to do for a while and couldn't pass it up. Pikes Peak is one of about 60 mountains above 14,000 ft in elevation here in Colorado and our ride was going to go from basically the top all the way back down into the springs (about 7,000 ft elevation loss). We got dropped off at the top around 10 am Saturday morning and made our way down taking videos and pictures in between stops. We stopped at Lake Moraine and ate lunch on the sandy shore and then kept riding down all the way down to the bottom. At the end of the day we rode over 27 miles and it took us about 6 hours to go from top to bottom. It was one of the best rides I have ever done and the crew I was with made it a really awesome experience to remember. I had many of those "wow I am really out here in the Colorado wilderness doing what I love"moments on the way down and it just reminded me how thankful I am to be out here on exchange! As always, enjoy the pictures.