The weekend was the real excitement. We took a 3 day weekend in Colorado Springs. Once we got there we went to HuHot because Monica loves it! It didn't hurt to also have a birthday certificate that got Monica's food free. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of NOT Mongolia.
When we got to the hotel they asked us why we were staying and we said it was our anniversary, so they gave us free champagne. We didn't really know what to do about that, but we had one of those rooms with a kitchen and all, so we just put it in the fridge. When we got back from HuHot Monica really wanted sparkling cider so we decided to see if we could go trade it. They didn't have anything non-alcoholic in the liquid beverage department, but they let us switch it for ice cream. Not too shabby as I'm pretty sure we both secretly wanted that.
The next morning we went out to they Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. It was a great zoo! They try to do various things to bring people closer to the animals and you can even pay to do special one on one activities with animals.
When we got there a sloth started climbing out above our heads! There was a trainer there holding food to coax it out. I have now witnessed that sloths are truly slow. They also have really gnarled curly nail/claws. Not to many people talk about that! Also, they love green beans! That's what the trainer had. We watched the sloth eat for a while until green bean foam started coming out of it's mouth...
We got to the sea otters in time to see their "enrichment" time. Nothing says enriching like a bunch of fish heads on a floaty tube. I suppose this is why we don't live in the zoo.
In their Australia section they had wallabies that were out among the guests. You had to stay off the grass, but if a wallaby wanted to be touched it could come to the path. Needless to say they Wallabies were clinging to the far wall, but only a few feet away.
Fortunately they had a baby wallaby in a bag that you could come up and pet! As I look at this picture I realize that a bagged wallaby is an interesting idea... but it was super soft and came with free hand sanitizer!
The best of the zoo was the snow leopard, which recently became my favorite animal (as I only recently found out they exist). We got there for game time too. They dropped a box that had a bag of meat in it for it to play with. The snow leopard didn't seem to give it much attention. Then it looked straight at me and started walking forward and suddenly pounced! Lucky for me it didn't pounce at me, it jumped about 6 or 7 feet in the air and landed behind were it started on the box, and in the blink of an eye it was eating meat. I'm not exactly sure how it got in there so quick as I may have flinched when it looked like a snow leopard was about to attack me...
That night we went to a nice Italian restaurant. There was an old couple by us that go there every week. It was really good food, and Monica and I got a picture together, but the lighting is quite unfortunate on Monica and makes it look like she was bleached... I will forgo including the picture as today is Monica's birthday.
The next day we played some board games in our room before we had to check out. We headed off for church which was only 2 minutes away!.. Well... Monica's phone got her location wrong, and then she thought the location reported as her address was the church address since it was a few minutes away. When we got to "church" it turned out to be an industrial building... We found the right place and got there only a little late, so that was fortunate.
After church we went to the place we were to stay that night, in a CASTLE!
We spent a while walking around the grounds because there is a lot of land around it. It was also fun to look through the castle at the various decor. This shower must be at least... 100 years old!
I also became great friends with the local knight!
And here we are out on the grounds in front of the castle.
After walking around the grounds for a while we headed down to Garden of the Gods, which was just barely south of where we were staying.
Awe-inspiring!
The next morning we hit up the links before returning home. It was a lot of fun to go golfing again and I finally got to try out the golf mode on my new watch! Sadly, my watch could not save my game. Turns out if you don't golf for over a year you stop being as good as you were...
After that we came back home to take on another week, but I'll save that tale for another time.
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