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Tuesday, June 30

Roadschool Trip to Colorado Springs + Olympics

With the Summer Olympics coming up, we took a road trip to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs!  It's also a great chance to hike Garden of the Gods...
The US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs is home to athletes and coaches as they train for the next Olympic Games.  It opened in 1978, and is able to provide housing, dining, recreational facilities and other services for up to 557 coaches and athletes at one time.  It also gives tours every half hour, for those who like to dream big!

 The athletes stay in fully furnished dorms, and have access to an all-day-long all-you-can-eat buffet at the adjoining cafeteria.  It's the best of the best for the elite few who are lucky enough to be invited to train here...
The swimming pools are humongous; the weight rooms are tricked out with every possible weight-lifting technology, including some you've never even thought of in your wildest dreams!  They have some fantastic equipment here, and probably the best sports medicine facility around.  It was lunchtime, so the pool and weight room were fairly quiet during our tour.
We watched the boys' volleyball team in training games, and got to play around in one of the bobsleds...
One of the highlights of the day was springing along on the same floor that some of my favorite gymnasts have trained on!  Oh....to have one hour to play on that equipment!!!
When we told the kids we were heading to Colorado, the only place they really wanted to visit was the Garden of the Gods.  Granted, they didn't really know what else was out there, but they had a one-track mind on this.  So it was our number one 'must do.'

At the entrance of our parking area, there was a trail guide pointing out all of the various geological 'structures,' like the Kissing Camels shown in the second photo.  We had fun renaming almost all of them!
Ah, but the disappointment quickly set in when we made them get down and stop climbing.  Without a permit and (naturally) the correct gear, climbing is not allowed.  We had not come prepared to climb, but we did spend a long time watching the ones who had.
We spent a lot of time walking the trails and exploring the plant life in the area.  It's pretty different from what we're used to seeing at home and on our east coast jobs.  It was morning, not too hot yet, and the day was shaping up to be a beauty!
As we were leaving, we discovered the area that is set up for climbing.  We had watched the rock climbers from the trail, and the boys were a little disappointed that they weren't able to climb, so we let them crawl all over this area.  All four of us enjoyed that hour!!
What you can't see in this picture is that the oldest has just fallen off a rock and disappeared into.....well, apparently a mini-cave that he found.  
Isn't the view stunning??

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