Pikes Peak and Garden of Gods, Colorado

Day-1: Pikes Peak and Garden of Gods, CO

Finally the day arrived. We had an early morning 7:30 AM flight from Tampa International Airport to Denver International Airport. We reached Denver around 9:30 AM local time and boarded the Airport shuttle to pick up the rental car from “Avis Rent a Car” near Denver Airport. As we had to cover both Pikes Peak Summit and Garden of Gods on the first day, we carried homemade food to avoid delays.

We started from Avis around 11:30 PM to Pikes Peak Summit which is a 2 hour 30 mins drive and reached there around 2:30 PM.

There was a $30 entry fee to the attraction. We spent couple of hours driving through the attraction, clicking photos.

There was not much of a fall foliage but we found some scenic spots throughout the drive.

We left from Pikes Peak around 4:30 PM and reached Garden of Gods at 5:30 PM. There was no entry fee for this attraction.

We had an hour to cover the place as those days it got dark by 6:30 PM. We ended up spending more than an hour driving around the place and making stops to take photographs.

Around 7:30 PM local time, we left from Garden of Gods to the hotel. This was an hour and 30 mins drive. We took a stop by an Indian restaurant and grabbed some food for to go. Around 10 PM, we checked into Vintage Hotel, Winter Park, Colorado. This hotel was nearest to Rocky Mountain National Park which was our second day destination, so we booked this for our stay that night. We were bit tired from the flight journey and road travel thus we quickly had dinner and went to bed.

Tips:

Check weather in advance, as sometimes it gets too cold.
Wear clothes in layers or carry jackets, as it gets too windy and chilly at the top.
Carry medicine for motion sickness as the road is steep and curved.