Rock Gardens of the Gods

There are a lot of Colorado Springs city parks that would be National Parks anywhere else. Garden of the Gods to name only one. There is a ski slope in town. You can do some very challenging climbing in town, mountain bike in town, ride horses (both equestrienne and rodeo) in town, skate on the most famous athletic rink in the world. You can also visit the Olympic Training Center, the Ice Skating Hall of Fame, the Rodeo Museum.
Or just rock around the Garden of the Gods, the canyons up towards Pike's Peak, or the Front Range Road seen up above town to really get a hot hit of the rockies.
All without leaving the comforts of a nice town.

Quick Tips:

The nicest parts of town are around Acacia Park downtown, or the long, under-exploited walk along the 'river' past the old stone buildings of Colorado College and old gold wealth. Colorado City (west of town, towards Manitou and the pass) missed the civic 'improvements' that ruined the old downtown, and is a nice gentrified place of old red stone and brick. Manitou Springs is a great old village to ramble around, a sort of a combination of Old West movies, genuine village charm, tourism, gentrification--with actual castles, and the healing, Indian-sacred (of course) mineral springs.
Avoid the tourist traps and stick to nature and sports. Don't just drive through the Garden of the Gods--get out on the trails and do a little climbing. It will challenge at about any level and is just a cool place to walk around and sit and look.

Best Way To Get Around:

The traditions of yesteryear (travois and covered wagon) no longer serve. Neither do the traditions of my youth (hemi-charged Barracudas). There's a bus system, and you can hike and climb and bike and all that, but you have to face it, C. Springs is a driving kind of town. Even the Pike's Peak Hill Climb isn't about alpinism--it's a motor race. (A pretty insane one at that, I put a wheel of my TR-3 over a 400 foot drop in 1965 and had to have my seat covers cleaned.)

During my High School years (Wasson High 66, Go Thunderbirds, etc.) there were three Abercrombie and Fitch stores in the country--New York, San Francisco, and the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. Since then 'Abercrombies' has devolved into a slightly snottier Gap, but the Broadmoor is still the dowager of the West, as impeccably and obsessively elegant as in the days when the Cripple Creek goldfields gave 'Cattlerattle Springs' more millionaires per capita than any place in the world, yet gracious welcoming of all comers.
The Broadmoor is a lot more than just a hotel. It hosts the Bob Hope golf classic. It has its own lake, which Maxfield Parrish moved around to the front when he painted the Old Girl's portrait. It has an ice rink, but so does Madison Square Gardens. But THIS rink is Broadmoor World Arena, one of the most famous frost jobs in the skating world--more Olympians have trained in the Arena than any other dozen US rinks, from Peggy Fleming (also class of 1966, but from the slightly inferior Cheyenne Mountain HS) to the present day when it forms a major sinew of the Olympic Training Center program. Not to mention yearly international hockey tournaments that no other town in the US can touch. They have their own rodeo stadium here, an ammenity noticably lacking at the Ritz Carlton and scene of the Pikes Peak or Bust rodeo and reign of the much coveted Girl of The Golden West. (I once dated a GGW, but omitted Michel's and lost out). Which reminds me, they also have a ski area, right there in town. It may be small and icy, but it's where I learned to do the Christie. (probably because I DID take Christie to Michel's). This plus all the usual accoutrements of a world-class hotel/resort.
The Broadmoor is nestled beautifully into the Front Range where the Eastern Colorado plains suddenly, dramatically and without preamble, tilt up to become the Rockies. Just walk around the lobby and get a perspective on how things used to be done. Well, okay, how things used to be done for the wealthy. But as Cousin Max sort of said in the 'Sound of Music', it's not how the rich live, it's how you live when you're around them.
Cheap populism aside, the Broadmoor is was magificent when built in 1918, and remains so today, one of the great hotels of the Americas and arguable the finest in the West.
There's the usual drawback to all this elegance--it will set you back anywhere from $190 a room to over $2500 for a suite ( take a deep breath--I do a lot of typos, but that isn't one of them) If it makes you feel better, think $91,2500 a year, NOT including breakfast.

When I was in High School, there was a basic litmus test guys had to pass on a date: you either took a girl to Michel's for dessert or you didn't. There was no business in town that so dominated its socio-economic niche; and that niche was luxuriant desserts. Today Michel's is still there, a half block off Acacia park, and still topping off proms and movies and dinners out, like it has since 1952.
Apart from a creamy, delicious array of sweets ranging from the tasty to the architectural, Michel's always had a macho challenge going on, a 'Can You Get Around This?' dessert at the top of the food chain. In my day it was the Pikes Peak, but time moves on and now the cream to whip is the "Believe It Or Not" sundae. And, believe it or not, it costs $100. All I can say is, don't scoff until you see the damn thing. It's 'Antarctica Starts Here', the Mendenhall Glacier of goodies, and you don't HAVE to try to eat it yourself--bring along somebody to help...like the Iraqi Army. Or just forget the 'because it's there' dare and have something more realistic/fantastic. They make their own chocolate and ice cream and I never met anyone, ever, with a bad word to say about Michel's.
It's not even a particularly expensive place. You can get a hotdog for under $5, a great Monte Christo for $7. And they still have gyros: they were the first in town to have them, way back when--a feature of the Greek family that started Michel's and still owns it. (If you can truly own a cultural landmark, pigout heaven, and elemental dating ticket-punch).

The 'uphill' side of town--after Pikes Peak avenue slopes up thorugh Colorado City to Manitou Springs--is crammed with a nutso swarm of tacky tourist traps, most of which are flat-out fakes. Why visitors to this spectacular and dramatic region would need these cheezy sideshows is a mystery: why they would have to be faked in the face of the bedrock integrity of the mountains probably says something negative about our whole species.

The 'Cliff Dwellings' are a Mesa Verde knock-off built in 1906 and featuring generic 'Indian' dancers doing Plains Indians dances. Hey, the real thing is only a few hours drive away.

The 'Ghost Town' is even stupider--for one thing it's indoors! We used to go over and shoot out the windows when they were building it, so it's not really old west, but was actually the scene of shootouts by bad guys (one of us kids was actually named Billy). You can see Roosevelt's bulletproof limousine here, and (I kid you not) a two-headed calf. You get the picture. Santa's Northpole Workshop is NOT at the North Pole, is NOT a workshop, and, Virginia, does NOT feature Santa Claus.

Even Seven Falls is mostly a light show...and they turn them off at night to save water (and wear and tear on the rocks, I guess).

The Van Briggle Art Pottery studio and showroom is sort of half ass real. It's really where they made the pottery that gained such acclaim and awards since 1899 and you can see some beautiful examples of Art Nouveau gesture in clay. But it has become mostly a hustle with high-pressure salespeople pushing you to buy.

The Cave Of the Winds is also sort of half-fake. It really is a cave. And it really has real limestone formations inside. But the stagmites have been moved around, colorized, spotlit, and otherwise messed with over the years. The biggest attraction is a huge pile of junk where people leave stuff from bobby pins to souvenirs to hygiene products for the enlightenment of future visitors. There have been a lot of marriages performed in the Cave (incredibly)--none in front of natural formations, all in the room full of junk! I was a guide in the Cave for one summer (those who call me a troglodyte have a certain basis in fact) but was fired when my ennui hatched the dreaded Truth Tour. ('Here you see the famous Painted Curtain, so called because...we just painted it. Notice that when you throw you coins into the famous Bottomless Pit, they stop sinking three inches below the surface? Obviously there is a shallow bottom, but with a trick coat of paint. But please continue to toss coins, we guides fish them out for lunch money. And so forth.) But I will say this, the cave has a great location up a canyon. It's worth a drive out just to stand on the precipitous porch of the shop, munch some popcorn, and look down. The drive back takes you through some cool little canyons, and past some very unique 'Springs' type houses carved out of live rock.

But basically, why not just go up Pikes Peak, to the Garden of the Gods, take the Cog Railway up the Peak, check out the incredible grounds of Glen Eyrie and leave this crap to the true 'tuna' (as we cavemen called them--'Pisolites' were girls in cavespeak, 'Chrysolites' were babes, 'Mesomorphs' were hags, 'train wrecks' were tours with more than usual quota of assholes). If you go for these roadside attractions, you earn whatever name they call you.

The Air Force Academy is a sort of triumph of Jetsons architecture, everything built out of lightweight aircraft materials. If you are into the whole aerospace, Jet Jockey scene (we used to call Cadets 'Sugar Jets', but it was obviously because they beat us out for the girls) there are tours. One sight at Birdland stands out for me, and I would recommend it to any fan of church architecture. The Chapel, that famous row of pointed steel teeth, has a gorgeous interior that can't really be evaluated in photographs. The Jewish Chapel downstairs is cozy and somehow manages to feel sort of traditional in an ultra-modern way, but the real show is the main goyim chapel upstairs under those thrusting triangles of steel. Between the 'teeth' are strips of cement imbedded with big chunks of stained glass, in the style big in modern churches in the sixties. But here the colors gradually modulate from a deep restful violet at the entry to a golden blaze at the altar. As you walk up the aisle you and your mood gradually lift up through the spectrum, until the yellow shining at the front is positively exalting. It's a very different way of achieving the uplift aimed at by all the gold and vertical eye-leading of European cathedrals, but it definitely works. The cross (a sort of distorted propeller) is ridiculous, the three legged, cylindrical white marble pulpit looks like a vintage Maytag, the pipe organ looks like a Gatling gun--but the light in this space demands it's own respect and even reverence.

They built this since my time, when the only thing that put the Springs on the world sporting map was ice skating. Well now they have an entire training center in place (and a good place, when you train at 6000 feet you have that much more edge on the rest of the world--a lesson from the Mexico City games of 1968) and it has even become the headquarters of of the U.S. Olympic Committee (despite a bid and big bribe from Salt Lake City).
If you dig the Olympics and couldn't get to Australia, there is always a trace of it going on here--and it's a great place to inspire the kids. You can watch a 90 minute film on the Olympics and take a guided tour of the facilities--all for free. And what you see on the tour is not Universal Studios--it's real Olympic Athletes and hopefuls doing their training at fencing or uneven bars or judo or boxing or whatever.

1750 E. Boulder St. (719) 578-4618

But speaking of the ice-skating days, Colorado Springs has long been the major name in U.S. figure skating. People would send kids here to grow up into medal hopefuls and Ice Capades stars. The plane crash that killed the U.S. team created a casualty list of mostly Springs residents. And now there's a Hall of Fame and World Museum for Figure Skating--and it's only right it should be right up by the Broadmoor World Arena. No fee to check out their memorials, art collection, costumes, medals, and library. (719) 635-5200.

Now listen, rodeo is a sport, too, okay? And they have their Hall of Fame and Museum, too. And it's just north of the Springs (exit 147 off Interstate 25). Spurs, trophies, gold buckles, paintings, photos, and some cool saddles. Yeehaw, ya lil dogies. (It's $6, 528-4764).

Tourism has always been part of the picture in Colorado Springs, from the very first--so it hasn't deformed things much. And if there were nothing else here but the Garden of the Gods, people would flock here to see it. As it is, it's just the biggest headache for the City Parks Department.
The sudden upthrust of the Rockies left the entire front range with huge spires of red sandstone. Down in New Mexico, it gives a name to the Sange de Christo range. Up by Boulder you know it as Red Rocks Amphitheater, the most imposing natural music venue in the country and site of U-2's 'Under a Blood Red Sky' video. Around Colorado Springs the rock spires thrust up all over the place--in Glen Eyrie there are obelisks of stone 70 feet high and only 5 feet thick. As a boy (very impressed by the huge brilliant red Indians that loom over Manitou Avenue) I imagined a red Indian skin lying under the landscape, that pressures under the earth blew up into the sky like flames. Now, in my years, I don't see much to change about that image. And nowhere is that eruption of blood/fire/stone as hallowed and chaotic as in the Garden of the Gods. People come up with these names for a reason.
There is a little something for everyone among these ruddy monoliths. We used to skateboard down through them (leaving more red stains). Now there are mountain bike trails. An old Indian trading post still sells souvenirs. I've seen cheap Taiwan crap come out of there, and some really nice turquoise. There is great climbing, from thrilling to impossible, while all the doves in the wind-scoured holes up above watch, their cooing amplified by the natural curve of the stone. I threw a rock concert in the Garden in 1972 (and did I get in trouble with the city for taking out a permit for a Sunday school picnic and drawing 10,000 hippies who shut the park down on Mother's Day) and at one point raised my peyote-glazed eyes to the huge slabs hanging over the concert stage--and saw dozens of climbers listening to the music while hanging on ropes and hammocks hundreds of feet above.
There are certain famous configurations, the Kissing Camels (now floodlighted, creating a popular makeout zone). Balance Rock, sitting there impossibly poised. Steamboat Rock (okay I have no idea why they call it that, but it's a damned impressive chunk of stone), all located right off parking areas, right off roads. But you can slip off into the trails between the slabs and spires, crawl up into the crevices, stare through crevices at sudden precipices, lope along through the little pines surrounded by the silent clamor of the Gods. And, really, I think you should.