Day 6: Colorado Springs

Last day of sightseeing - good thing, too, since I had to delete some of the duplicate photos from my camera's memory card so I'd have room for photos from this day.

First off we went back to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, where we rode the skyride that takes you over the zoo but won't let you actually into the zoo. Luckily, it's pay once and ride until the stamp wears off of your hand, so we could let Liza ride it over and over and over again. I don't know which she liked better, the skyride or the climbing gym at the top.

She told us the last one was practice for her swaypole act, which she was obsessing over after watching a circus video approximately 400 times that week.

After lunch we stopped to admire a grasshopper that was hanging out in the parking lot near our car. Liza REALLY admired it.

I need to photoshop some tire tracks on her back and use this as our Christmas card :)

After lunch we went to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings, which are very well-preserved Anasazi houses from 700 years ago. Even 700 years ago, private parking was a perk:

The cliff dwellings were really cool, especially because they're pretty much all accessible and there aren't any "no touching" signs anywhere. Liza could run, crawl, creep, peek, and explore to her heart's content. And the doors were sized just right for her:After getting our clothes covered in indelible red dust (I've got the t-shirt stains to prove it), we headed for the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Research Center. The locals were happy to invite us to dinner:Liza was less than thrilled with looking at all the real fossils and recreated models, but she loved the kids' activity area. Here she is, showing off one of the new varieties of dinosaur she discovered that day:Dinosaur freak that I am, I had a good time looking at the models and recreations, checking out some of the newer varieties that weren't known when I was in my heyday (second grade). And every so often I'd giggle about the fact that all these dinosaur fossils were displayed on a surface covered with rubber mulch made from petrochemicals. Nothing like displaying the fake dinosaurs on top of what's left of the real dinosaurs, right?