Colorado Adventure 4 - Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and Boulder

 Day 4 - Wednesday: Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and Boulder

It's Wednesday morning and time to leave Colorado Springs. Let's take one last look at our morning view.

Pike's Peak

What was awesome about this trip was flexibility. We didn’t go strictly to schedule. We decided last night to go to the zoo today, and this was one of the best parts of the trip! I’ve been to zoos from Toronto to San Diego, and this little non-profit on the side of a mountain is one of my favorites!

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Colorado Springs

We checked out of our hotel and headed up-up-up to the Zoo. The grounds and views are beautiful! This multi-storied Zoo clung to the side of Cheyenne Mountain.

At an elevation of 6,714 feet above sea level, it is the highest zoo in the country!

CMZ is also very big on animal and Earth conservation. When you enter the park, each visitor is given 3 tokens to drop into the conservation effort of your choice.

No paper - they suggest you snap a photo of the map

For a few dollars you can feed over a dozen giraffes from the boardwalk.

Yum! Lettuce! Best $5 ever!

Yes, there was a webcam! We were concerned if we had data that far up so luckily Lorna and Brenna were on their computers back home snapping away for us! We have dozens of these shots!

Oh, I had a hard time getting away! The giraffes were so friendly and so close - I didn't want to leave them. Luckily there were many more well cared for critters winding onward and upward.

We visited the elephants and then ascended the path to the Australian Walkabout.

Onto the Asian Highlands.

And over to Rocky Mountain Wild.

Closest we got to a moose that we know of

We chilled with some penguins hanging out outside and ended at Primate World.

Although a lot of climbing (we had to take an elevator up to the elephants), it was very well designed so there was little backtracking. We spent a glorious few hours there.

After this great adventure we cooled off in the car and drove the loop around the Garden of the Gods one last time before adventuring to Boulder for lunch and shopping.

Garden of the Gods from the Juniper Loop

Rockies to the West of the highway north

Boulder, CO

Turning towards Boulder

JPS: Enjoy the View! GC66Y8J

One of the most visited graves in Colorado belongs to assassin Tom Horn [story].

History in Stone 2 Virtual GC9756

Boulder has an impressive pedestrian-only series of shopping plazas along Pearl Street. We stopped for an early dinner/late lunch (YUM!) out on the plaza, poked around a few shops and completed several enjoyable Adventure Labs downtown.

BarTaco - YUM!

Estes Park, CO

But dusk in settling in so it's time we moved on. We wrapped by finally making our way to Estes Park for the night (where we were kept awake all night by the bugling elk in the motel parking lot - more on that tomorrow!).

The road was beautiful and scary as F*

It seems only fitting we end this post with another mountain photo. This time from downtown Estes Park. Is that snow on that cap?