Day 8 - Around Colorado Springs

As expected, we started the day at Einstein Bros. Bagels, sharing one more bagel sandwich. It would be our last one of the trip.

The night before, someone had told us about all the growth north of town along Interstate 25, so we decided to see it for ourselves. They weren't exaggerating. What had been mostly open grassland when we lived here is now filled with office buildings, hotels, shopping centers, and strip malls. Progress, I suppose. There were even a couple of Starbucks where there once wasn't much of anything.

With nothing planned until lunch, we headed to the south side of town to wander through The Citadel Mall. We were hoping it wouldn't be mostly empty like the mall we had visited a few days earlier. Unfortunately, we arrived a little before 10:00, only to discover it didn't open until 11:00. Rather than wait around, we headed back to the hotel, did a little packing, and waited for lunchtime.

When noon rolled around, there was no debate about where to eat. We returned to Marigold for another bowl of their French onion soup. It was every bit as good as we remembered—still the best.

After lunch, we took one last drive up to Peregrine. It was there, in 1995, that we had our house built after moving from Portland to Colorado Springs. Seeing it again brought back a lot of wonderful memories and was a fitting way to wrap up our visit to a place we once called home.s.

Click photo to enlarge

It really was a beautiful home—three stories, 4,200 square feet, four bedrooms, four bathrooms, a large woodshop, and spectacular views. It was a wonderful place to live, although it was certainly a lot of house for just the two of us. These days we've reached the one-story stage of life, and we're perfectly happy with that.

That evening we enjoyed a great dinner and even better conversation with our good friend Steve at P.F. Chang's. Steve is one Colorado Springs friend we get to see regularly since he makes the trip to Arizona almost every year.

With dinner over, we returned to the hotel and finished most of our packing. The plan is to get an early start tomorrow for the drive to Farmington, New Mexico. Just two more nights on the road, and we'll be home.