Last week I had planned on doing a hike heading to the Hot Springs with my hiking friend, but time didn’t allow this.
Plus I also am having some trouble with my left knee. And neither of us really felt like taking a long hike.
So my hiking friend and I decided to explore a trail in the Garden of the Gods neither of us had ever taken before.
The Spring Canyon Trail or Cabin Canyon Trail forks off from the very challenging trail that is not part of the park system that we took earlier this year. And that I had hiked on many times in years past. That other trail is not on any map and I would never hike it without the sky being very blue as it goes up a creek bed that has pretty steep sides.
Another other fork goes to the Siamese Twin Trail that is a favorite to take visitors on and I have done many times. But it turned out my hiking partner had never done that hike and after doing this trail, we decided to take that one. Will share more about that in the next post.
And it looks like a very simple, flat trail at the beginning. Similar to some other trails in the area that don’t excite me much except when wild flowers are blooming. And there were a few wildflowers blooming along this trail. But they were few and far between.
The spunky yellow flower made me smile when I came upon him in the very rocky soil.
I did get into taking more photos of the ubiquitous cactus and yuccas that were beginning to green up and were seen as we started on this hike and all along the trail as we continued. Some of these cactus had very long spines. None of them do I ever want to land upon.
The only picture I took of the starting part of the trail shows a field of cactus and we figured it would continue to look like that for the whole trail. But as we passed through the barren bushes, we were greeted with a much more fun trail than we had anticipated seeing.
We were soon very pleasantly surprised by this trail and what it had to offer. Wonderful rock formations, great views of Pikes Peak and Ancient Cedar Trees.
I always have to stop in wonder when seeing these Ancient Cedar Tress. How long have they survived here? What have the seen through the years? Indians and now tourists from all over the world have walked past them. I always find their twisted trunks so very beautiful and feel honored to stand next to each one.
The sky sometimes as very blue with large fluffy clouds, at other times it was grey an pretty dingy.
I really want to get back and hike this trail again the next time I see blue skies and have an hour to get away from my office. The Prince or Princess rock in the foreground would look much happier if the sky behind Pikes Peak had been bluer. As it was, you can not tell that Pikes Peak can be seen behind this rocky formation, but it is.
We had lots of fun with the rock formations on this trail.
Here we found a rock formation that made us think of Jabba The Hutt.
Then there were some very suggestive rock formations . . . mushrooms, a table or what do you see?
Then there was this very sinister Skull Rock.
I played a little using some filters with this Lizard Rock leaning over the shoulder of his rocky friend. Feeling the need to get a bit creative and explore what can be done with a new plug-in that Tony Laidig turned us onto last week that works inside of PhotoShop.
Brought out the scaly side of the Lizard and all of his rocky friends in the area.
And finally, because my friend and I love to laugh and smile when out in Nature, we found this smiling Lizard formation.
And just a bit farther there were two rocks laughing the days away.
The day before I had seen a “Mutts” comic that I had cut out to give to my hiking friend. All it said was “All Bird Songs are Love Songs”. I had actually remembered to give it to her before we began this hike. So when I turned a corner and heard a bird singing, I had to find the source.
Up in a tree this sweet little bird sang and sang its love song for a very long time. We decided he was singing his heart song to find a mate this Spring. He was still singing when we walked on down the trail. It was so sweet we hated to leave him, but did hike on down the trail.