Day 264 - Pikes Peak

Thought of the day: We spent a lazy morning at the hotel pools.  Lila was still too young for the water slides, but she had fun hanging onto the edge of the infinity pool and looking out onto the neighboring lake.  The sight of swans, ducks, and large fish in the lake was very amusing for her.  At a blissful moment when I was sitting on the lounge chair, drinking a cold Pina Colada and watching the kids playing merrily in the water, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of joy as intense as the bright Colorado sun that's surrounding us.  On a day like this, in a setting like this, there's no room for any dark or murky feelings.  No matter where we are and who we are with, spending time at the pools never fails to bring about a sense of happiness and well-being for me.  Yes, pools and summer are inseparable - one wouldn't have made sense without the other.

Photo of the day:

We took a cog train up to the summit of Pikes Peak this afternoon. At the elevation of over 14,000 feet, the view  on top was pretty amazing.  Katharine Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful" after taking in the views here. It was a cloudy afternoon so the view was not as spectacular as it could have been on a sunny day, but the rain clouds made some pretty interesting images nevertheless. On the way down, we ran into some rain and soon afterward everybody on the train was elated to see double rainbows rising above the railway. The weather in the morning and in the afternoon couldn't have been any more different, as a typical Coloradan summer day should be.