Garden of the Gods

This morning Barbara and I decided to brave the cold and visit the Garden of the Gods. As it turned out it was a good call. The last time we visited the park there were so many people that in most places we couldn’t find a parking spot and when we could there were so many people getting good photos was difficult. When we started this morning the temperature was 34 degrees and it topped out at 37 degrees. Not exactly t-shirt weather.

The outstanding geologic features of the park are the ancient sedimentary beds of deep-red, pink and white Pennsylvania age sandstone, conglomerate and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but have now been tilted vertically and faulted into “fins” by the immense mountain building forces caused by the uplift of the Rocky Mountains and the Pikes Peak massif during the Laramide Orogeny. The movement of ice during the Ice Ages (Pleistocene Epoch) resulted in erosion and glaciation of the rock, creating the present rock formations. Evidence of past ages can be read in the rocks: ancient seas, eroded remains of ancestral mountain ranges, alluvial fans, sandy beaches and great sand dune fields.