This morning it was off to the Garden of the Gods. An area of beautiful red rock formations. The first photo is of the Kissing Camels. We had the opportunity to see this formation from the other side of the mountain only considerably further away. The second photo is of the Balanced Rock. Not really very much between the two huge rocks, but apparently it has been there many years. I remember my father talking about it on one of their trips west which would have been in the 60's or so.

We made a wrong turn on our way to the Balanced Rock and took a gravel/dirt road up the mountain. It was one lane wide most of the way and it really went up with switchbacks everywhere. I might have turned around but there was not anyplace wide enough to do that without getting really close to the drop off. After several miles we came upon a large collection of beautiful homes, two and three stories high. They were all on the side of the mountain and had a beautiful view of the surrounding terrain.


We could see that the houses were all on paved streets and at one place we could see what appeared to be an entrance to a gated community. We did find a side road that kinda went down over the hill and joined up with that blacktop road, but it had a locked barricade. We drove on up the mountain, way higher than those homes and you could see for miles, but rather than go any further we turned around and came back down.

After coming down and making the correct turn we found the Balanced Rock, just where it had always been.

The third photo is of the gravel road just after we got on it, plenty wide enough to turn around, but we were not aware it went somewhere far away. Apparently this road was the original road to the housing addition and at some time after they had all of the paved streets in, they discontinued using it, at least for their luxury cars.

I must say that we passed 2 or 3 vehicles on that road coming the opposite direction. Now, I do not know if they were coming from somewhere or had done the same thing we did and had turned around. We will never know.