Garden of the Tourists

I decided it'd be nice to go for a little hike in the Garden of the Gods today with Frodo. Bad idea! It's the day after Christmas, there are plenty of out of towners here visiting family for the holidays, and where did they all convene today? You guessed it. To compound matters, there is a lot of road work going on inside the Garden of the Gods, which basically meant that I was stuck in bumper to bumper traffic almost as soon as I entered the park. Not so relaxing and nature-y. We did eventually battle our way to the High Point, where there was exactly one parking spot coming available just as we pulled up. In the end, though, we had a nice little hike and even chatted with a few people along the way (some of them from as far away as Colombia!), since Frodo is The Friendliest and Cutest Dog on Earth. All's well that ends well!

This family (a much larger group than what you see here) was snapping pose after pose in front of the view when we started our hike, and they were still at it when we returned to the parking lot.