Here are a few more pictures from our trip...

A picture of the snow plow train in front of us.

The Garden of the Gods (Colorado Springs, CO)

John's artistic view of the St. Louis Arch.

Our Trip Home

A few weeks ago John and I had to move our car from New Mexico back to Ohio. Before leaving Albuquerque however, John twisted my arm and forced me to take the Sandia Peak Tramway. It is the world's longest aerial tramway. I'm not necessarily afraid of heights, but being in a swaying boxcar hanging from a wire on the side of a mountain is not my idea of fun. The tram takes you up to an elevation of 10,378 feet. At the observation deck, it is windy and cold, but you can see 11,000 square miles on a clear day. It was snowy and the scenery was beautiful. The tram took 24 months to build and began taking passengers up Sandia Peak in 1966.

After leaving Albuquerque, we headed north on I-25 and crossed into Colorado. We stayed in Colorado Springs for the night. But first we headed to Pikes Peak for a train ride! The summit of Pikes Peak is at about 14,110 feet, but on the day we visited we could only go to about 12,000 feet due to blowing snow. Along some parts of the trip the snow was about twelve feet deep on both sides of the train. A snow plow train was directly in front of us clearing the snow off the tracks, but the snow completely covered the view from the windows of the train. Once we cleared that section of the mountain, the views were spectacular. You could see parts of the Rockies in the distance. It was neat to imagine what it must have felt like to be one of the early settlers arriving into this area by horse and buggy!

We also visited the Garden of the Gods, a beautiful area of towering red rock formations. It is a National Natural Landmark. For more information visit http://www.springsgov.com/Page.asp?NavID=987.

The next morning we left Colorado Springs and headed to Kansas. Just after crossing into Kansas, we stumbled onto the worlds largest easel. Believe it or not, John had heard of this and so we just had to stop and take his picture. He was excited and wanted to go find the worlds biggest ball of twine (also somewhere in Kansas). I guess it is the little things...

We decided to stop overnight mid-way through Kansas in a little town called Salina. We stayed at a bed and breakfast called Hunters Leigh. We had never stayed at a B&B, so we're not sure what to compare it to, but we basically stayed with a nice couple in one of their spare bedrooms. She made a really nice french toast breakfast the next morning though! We left Salina and headed to St. Louis next.

We visited the famous Arch, although we didn't go up inside. It was closed for some reason, but instead we visited the museum underneath the Arch. We highly recommend visiting the museum, if you haven't already. It is really nice (and free) and has a ton of historical information. It was really impressive and someplace we will take the kids once they are older.

On the last day, we drove from St. Louis to home. We got an early start because we were both anxious to get home and see Alex. Besides sampling the new McDonald's gourmet coffee somewhere in Illinois, this leg of the trip was uneventful.

Oceanside, CA

Last week we decided to escape the cold snowy weather here in Ohio and headed out to sunny Southern California. We flew into San Diego (via the new Skybus airline) and rented a condo just north of the city in Oceanside. We played on the beach and relaxed at the condo most of the time. But we did visit the San Diego Zoo and Disneyland! Here are just a few of the pictures that capture our family vacation.