Day 10 - Homeward bound

Our last day started lazily, despite being woken up early by departing guests, and we eventually dragged ourselves downstairs for breakfast and the fast-becoming-traditional "what do you have on your laptop I can steal?" session. We didn't swap any music or movie files or anything honest. We wanted Max's pictures but when he went upstairs to get a memory stick he fell asleep instead - something about an exhausting evening? Not sure what he was on about.

As we had the day to idle away and the sun was once again shining we were going to go to the Garden of the Gods before departing. As were other people, it transpired, so we all went together in different cars (bad of us I know, but we had different places to go straight after). The Garden of the Gods are a strange set of red sandstone-like rock formations that you can walk around. With a backdrop of snowy mountains and a brilliant blue sky they did indeed look great. As we had time we strolled slowly around - we had Bill, Irma and Maraliese (probably spelt very wrong) with us so the pace couldn't be that fast and it was very relaxing. We took lots of pictures, talked and relaxed, all in all, a very nice way to end our trip. Then we headed off to find something to eat in Manitou Springs, stopping at balanced rock to take more pictures including what Harold likes to call "hero" pictures. This one is of me posing and looking into the distance, keeping an eye out for "Injuns".

Manitou Springs was lovely, very old west in style and very laid back. We found a nice restaurant which served Buffalo burgers and had a very pleasant final meal with some of the family before Inga and I had to say goodbye and head for the Interstate and Denver airport. It had been a wonderful trip but, as they say, all good things have to end. And our good thing was over (don't cry too much, we're going to go back to the US sometime and see them again plus visits to Cairo (Max and Rebecca) and China (Harold) so don't feel too sorry for us. Oh, you weren't...). We headed for home in the (turned out to be) vain hope the flight would be reasonably empty and we could sprawl out and sleep our way back across the ocean. I'll end with the last two shot, Inga and I outside the Stagecoach restaurant, site of our last US meal, and one of the few Tipi's we actually saw despite the fact we'd been travelling through 'Injun' country for ten days. Make of that what you will. Adios Amigo's!