Friday

Another work week for Joel is coming to an end. This week has been decently uneventful...his work has been going well, and I even got to eat lunch with him yesterday and meet his crew! Wednesday night, we had our friend from State that is here doing the Focus on the Family course over for supper. She brought a friend with her, and we had a great time visiting with them.

Joel and I went on two field trips yesterday. When he got home from work, we walked up to Palmer Park. This is a 730 acre park in the middle of the city, and it is only about a mile from our house. We walked up (and uphill) to the park and hiked to the top of a rock and had some great views of the city. The park has a playground and sports fields, but most of it is undeveloped and has hiking and mountain biking trails.

When we got home, we packed up a picnic supper and headed to Manitou Springs. We found on peakradar.com (local calendar of events) that a brass band concert was being held in a park in the town of Manitou Springs, and since the weather was so nice, we thought we'd give it a shot! Little did we know, Manitou (as the locals call it, and it is pronounced manitoo) is a hoppin' little place, and it took us about 20 minutes to find a parking spot. We were able to hear about 3 songs from the brass band before the concert was over, but it was a nice outing and we were able to walk around the cute town a bit.
Joel checking out the picnic basket.
Downtown Manitou Springs.

We were alos able to see where the Cog Railroad (train to the top of Pike's Peak) and Barr Trail (hiking to the top of Pike's Peak) begin. We also got an upclose view of "The Incline." We've only been introduced to the Manitou Incline this week. We just thought it was an old scar on hte mountain leftover from some mining operation, but it is also a trail you can hike. At some points, the slope is 50 degrees.
A view of the Incline from downtown Manitou.

A couple of images from manitouincline.net:



We'll add this to our list of things to do when our bodies get used to being hypoxic.

Not sure what the weekend holds for us yet...Joel has to work for about 1.5 hours Saturday and Sunday mornings, but he'll be done by 8 or so, so we'll see!