Friday, August 31, 2012

Leaving Pikes Peak

Right after leaving, found a nice rock to climb with some amazing views as you can sew. The roads down are curvy & windey and you news to drive at 1st or 2nd gear with proper breaking & stopping so you don't burn them down. What a drive & quite an accomplishment, its really XCiting!!





At Pikes Peak

At 14000+ feet, the pressure can really make you sick & weird. You can feel it. But the feeling if being at the top is just amazing. And definitely have the fried donuts, they do taste really good up there!!









To Pikes Peak

On our way to Pikes Peak, going through narrow winding roads, with some amazing views. It's $12 per person or $40 with upto 5 people in a car. You have to drive in 2nd or 3rd gear all the way up & watch out for Big Foot!!







Thursday, August 30, 2012

Lunch at Denver CO

So we stopped in Denver, Colorado for lunch at Euclid. Very delicious & nice but extremely fried, greasy & almost yucky food with happy hour on some awesome beer. Had a great lunch & now heading out to Colorado Springs, in extremely traffic conditions..









Denver @ Euclid Hall

Menu inspection time.  Ah... civilization!  


Forest fires

Horrible forest fire smoke, coming from Nebraska


Welcome to Colorado

We just entered Colorado & yes, we have network now :) stopped at visitor center for quick break & we can see smoke from forest fire towards west.






Welcome to Nebraska

We drove 10 miles off our route to step foot in Nebraska, the soil & air felt so different. It really did, maybe cuz of the passing Tani & smoke etc etc. BTW, lots of smoke due to forest fire in Nebraska national forest.





Where there's smoke...

.... it becomes hard to see.  Southern Wyoming or Northern Colorado seems to be having forest fires.  We don't really know what's going on.  Hopefully nothing too near the highway ...


Pain in neck

Everyone keeps saying to drive the speed limit.  But on this road they don't write the speed limit.  So how do we know what to do?? Instead of giving us the speed limit they just had hundreds of signs saying "do not pass" or "pass with care".   Argh!!!!


Another t-rain

Again a change in terrain and another t-rain.  Lots of both are out here.


Overlooking Nebraska(?)

<p>Finally we got ourselves a speed limit (65 MPH) and we're on our way.&nbsp; We're going south toward Nebraska but the highway veers right around it as though there were some political fight and Nebraska lost.  But we still want to go and touch our feet down there at least.
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Shady Rest Motel

Very cute little cabins in Custer, SD.  Behind the power sub-station (ok not so cute) and up on the hill but very close to main street of Custer.   Owners were nice and interior is very nice,  clean and modern.  Most importantly, internet is blazing fast allowing me to post on blog easily. (Is that sad that that is really important?   Anyway its maybe not really the most important,  plus the people in the cabin next door are playing on their iPad so it seems I'm not the only one happy about internet access - by the way we still don't have internet access on our phones, only a little roaming cellphone coverage AT&T). 



Mount Rushmore

And we finally made it to Mount Rushmore, the third major stop of our XC. It's huge, its amazing and its cool. Make sure to watch it both in day & night.. what an XCiting site!!







US-14, still in Wyoming

Seems like Wyoming view on forever. And its just 250000 population or something? Long winding roads, changing terrain, changing road color & yeah, forest fire!!