Big rocks and a wrestling champion

 August 7, 2014

We did more today than we anticipated.  We had planned to just visit with our friends Mike and Kathy and their son Liam today in Colorado Springs and just rest up before driving to Utah, but Kathy and Mike had some really cool places they wanted to show us.  First, we visited Garden of the Gods, a National Natural Landmark park that has some amazing rock formations.  Of course, it made our family think of Thunder Mountain Railroad – maybe we spent a little too much time at Disney.  It was awesome.

Then we went to a Ghost Town Museum – which was actually a lot of fun – they had built a mini-ghost town using quite a few real antiques and artifacts.  There was even a gold panning area and an old fashioned shooting gallery so the kids had fun.  

We went for a late lunch at a restaurant that served both Chinese and Thai food.  It was a little mom and pop place, but I swear to you, it has the most amazing coconut chicken curry ever.  It seriously was one of the best meals I have ever eaten, and I will be coming back to Colorado Springs for the chicken curry if for nothing else.  We did take a little break in the afternoon and the kids went swimming for a while. 

This evening we went over to the Olympic Training Center and met up with Whitney Condor who is the National Champion and World Team Member for women’s wrestling at 116 pounds.   She goes to church with our friends Kathy and Mike, and she agreed to meet Alex and show her around the Olympic Training Center a little.  Alex had actually planned to come out here right before our trip and work out with Whitney for a couple of days, but we had to postpone that because Alex sprained her wrist at practice the week before.  Whitney was very kind, and we could tell that Alex was really in awe and would love to train here someday.

For a day without any real plans to begin with, we really saw quite a bit!