Goodbye, Pueblo! Hello, Colorado Springs!

Family reunion: check. Rafting trip: check. Holy Cross Winery to buy a bottle of Colorado Nouveau (yum!): check. Royal Gorge Route Rail Trip: Check.

Time to move on to Family Ochoa Vacation Part II. On to Colorado Springs!

I, with my trip planning prowess, was savvy enough (isn't this pat on the back SO obvious?) to score a TLF (temporary living facility) at the Air Force Academy during parents week. So long, Pueblo Ramada Inn, with your two double beds that were not nearly enough to cushion us for a restless night's sleep. Hello, one bedroom suite complete with washer and dryer, fully stocked kitchen (with a flat-top stove), port-a-crib (yeay!), and pull-out sofa beds for the kids (hallelujah!)...And note this: ALL for $41 bucks a night. Booyah! God bless the Air Force!

The trip to the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Center was a dream for our budding paleontologist, Miss Sophia. She has been obsessed with dinosaurs for the past year, and the obsession isn't giving any signals of dying over anytime soon. She got to "dig" for fossils and look at her fave dino fossil, triceratops. AND, she found a fossil of a tylosaurus named "Sophie", which totally made her day.

Sophie was quite tickled that she and a fossil of a tylosaurus shared the same name.

The next trip of the day was the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, the only zoo in the nation to be ON the mountainside. Cool, breezy location with spectacular views = steep walkways and stairs = sore and aching thighs the next morning! The kids totally loved the fact that they could feed the giraffes and get THIS close. Even Liv, who I thought would be bored for this segment of the day, was absolutely entranced by the animals. She kept pointing at each animal saying, "Look! Look!" over and over again.

Look at that lion Dylan is sitting on!

Liv feeding crackers to the giraffe.

We haven't thoroughly explored the grounds of the academy yet, but we were driving past it and came across a lookout point with an excellent view of the whole campus.

After seeing the impressive Air Force Academy, Dylan has decided (for now) that he will become a cadet and a geologist.