(Jasmine, Jayana, Joel and Gabriella)

As it turns out, we stayed in neither Hayes nor Oakley. When we got into Oakley, which is where US 40 splits off from I-70 towards Colorado Springs, Ella was doing super well riding, we both felt good, and there were still a couple hours of sunlight left. So we decided to power on to Colorado Springs. We stopped in a little town at a grocery store and got some carrots and ranch dip, some cheese and crackers, and made that our dinner. Our bellies full, we set off for Colorado Springs.

The road was super bumpy and hilly, but we were making good time. The only problem was that we were going to arrive in CS at about 11:30 and we had no place to stay. We didn’t want to bother Shelley’s family that was there, because we had told them we wouldn’t be arriving until the next day, Tuesday. We also didn’t have any cell phone service for the first part of our trip. But once we crossed into Colorado, even though it was still rural and we were near nothing, we got full service, and called Nate’s parents, and had them book us a room online. With that taken care of we arrived as planned and crashed out in the hotel. Shelley ever so kindly gave Nate the bed with the huge dip in the middle, and slept with Ella in the good bed.

We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning in Colorado Springs, and had a decent continental breakfast. We were out of the hotel around noon, and went to The Garden of the Gods, which is a beautiful park with cool red rock formations. While at the visitor center there, we picked up some brochures for other stuff to do in the area, one of which was some Anasazi cliff houses, which looked pretty cool and not too far away, so we headed over towards them. Unfortunately when we got there, there was an $8.50 per person charge. We were able to snap a couple pictures as we pulled around though, so we totally stuck it to them.

Because we didn’t know when we would meet up with Shelley’s family, we walked around ‘Historic Colorado City’ a little neighborhood of Colorado Springs. We found a nice little deli and had delicious bagel sandwiches. While we were leaving we heard from Shelley’s Aunt and Uncle(Joel and Marcia), so we drove off to their house. Joel and Marcia made us a delicious dinner and cousin Nicki came over with two of her three kids, Jasmine and Jayana. Poor Joel had to stay home because he just had his tonsil removed. We stayed up chatting and catching up. We were planning on leaving the next day, but decided to stay one more day. We spent Wednesday doing laundry and catching up on sleep and then went over to Nicki’s house. Nate finally got to meet Jason and Joel, that makes it official that Nate has met all of Shelley’s family (at least all the family she has met). We ended up staying at Nicki’s for dinner and didn’t get out of there till late.

We had planned on getting up early to see Joel and Marcia one more time before we headed off, but not as early as Ella had in mind. Around 5:20am on Thursday morning we hear Ella yelling mommy turn the light on, turn on the light, we both thought her voice sounded muffled, kind of like she was under our bed. As Nate was turning on the light Shelley got down to find Ella and sure enough only her feet were visible, she was under the bed yelling for us. It was pretty hysterical, and she wasn’t even scarred.

We said our good byes to Uncle Joel and Aunt Marcia, and took a little nap, we were out of there house around noon and stopped by to see Nicki one more time. After a lunch of yummy pizza at Nicki’s we were off to Albuquerque.