Fredrikaa Travels: US road trip - Garden of the Gods

My friend and I just began our two-week-long road trip in the US with a rather epic start! This post features our arrival in the US and a first day visiting the Garden of the Gods, more to follow ;)

^{First stop, the Garden of the Gods!}

Starting our road trip

Arriving in Denver, Colorado after an 18 hour long trip from Norway, the first priority was just to crash in on an airport hotel for some much-needed sleep and adjustment to the new time zone (8 hours difference, yikes!).

The next day though, we didn't wait long to go back to Denver airport and pick up our car, a red convertible Mustang with just the right pimp-factor for two guys in their late twenties to feel badass.

^{Our Ford Mustang at the car rental pickup in Denver. The car will stay with us until we get to Las Vegas}

The car will stay with us for quite a while as we drive from Denver to Colorado Springs, Laramie in Wyoming, Moab in Utah, Page in Arizona, before Las Vegas in Nevada! So expect some pictures over the coming week ;).

^{Hitting the road for the first time while simply enjoying the feeling of being on holiday.}

The road from Denver down to Colorado Springs offered the right opportunity for the driver to get comfortable with the new car and for the navigator to get used to American roads! With the exception of an obligatory first stop at a Walmart to fill up what little storage space the sports car has with food and other essentials, the trip continued straight to the Garden of the Gods!

And boy, just arriving there was cool enough to make it worthwhile:

Garden of the Gods

^{Driving by the Garden of the Gods on the way to the parking lot for the tour.}

It's not difficult to understand why the place got the name that it did. The landscape is unlike anything else I've ever seen, with tall, pointy red mountains sticking out of the ground to create a stunning spectacle! After (finally) finding a place to park the car, we entered the park which consists of a neat pathway taking you around to most of the good views, I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:

^{The garden seen from the bottom with red spikes coming out of the ground seemingly from nowhere!}

While the bottom of the garden is nice enough, I would absolutely recommend taking one of the paths that lead up the hill. The view from above is simply too good to miss!

Along the way, you'll also find plenty of good spots in the shadow to take some great pictures where there's sufficient shadow for yourselves to not need glasses, while the background still glows red from the sun!

^{The road leading up the hill provided plenty of opportunities for good pictures!}

The Siamese twins

One thing to note is that you can drive an additional mile to another much smaller parking lot that takes you to a smaller, yet really cool, site called the Siamese twins. Although a bit tired from a long day on the road following our trip, we decided to give it a visit as well.

^{We arrived at the Siamese twins just in time before the sun went down!}

The rock formations are pretty cool, and you can't help but wonder how they ended up with more or less identical shapes!

In any case, the hole in the rock formation, combined with the great view behind it, made it perfect for some more pictures!

^{Road trip duo at Siamese twins!}

Leaving the Garden, we couldn't help but grab the last set of shots at the entrance.

^{I've been to the Garden of the Gods and approve of it's quality! :)}

Final thoughts

Overall, I would absolutely recommend visiting the Garden of the Gods! Our only regret was not coming here earlier in the day in order to also make it to the nearby Colorado Pikes Peak. Thus, I would recommend coming early in the day to make use of the morning sun.

There are plenty of amazing places to take pictures, but the angle of the sun often dictates where it will be good for personal photos.

That's it for the first day of our road trip! I'll have to see just how much time I find to make updates like this underway, or if I'll have to wait until I get back home to put in some effort to write more detailed stories from our journey while going over all of the pictures (there'll be plenty!). In any case, I hope you found this post interesting and perhaps will consider visiting the Garden of your Gods yourself!

Road trip to be continued...