Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
5/15/2024	2.8 miles	1 hour 12 minutes	219'	2.4 mph	314.9 miles

Parking: 

• Garden of the Gods, Main Parking Lot. Free.

Map:

• GoG-Park-Map-Detail-2016.pdf (friendsofgardenofthegods.org)
• Gai GPS app

Directions:

• Various trails through the park.

I've heard about this park from so many people, I knew I needed to visit it at some point. We were staying in Manitou Springs. I had been hoping to camp at a local state park, but unfortunately sites were already all booked up. 

After we got thundered out of Painted Mines Interpretive Park, we started heading to our hotel in Manitou Springs for the night. Except, we saw a sunny spot directly above Garden of the Gods. This park was our planned hiking location for tomorrow, but we figured we could try to get a little hiking in today while it wasn't thundering. We found parking easily, despite it being in the afternoon (we heard its best to get there early in the morning). We hiked various trails (no real plan), but again it started raining and then thundering, so we took the shortest route back to our car. We stopped at the Garden of the Gods visitor center to learn more about the park. I'm amazed this park is free, as it so well developed. We watched a movie at the park ($5), but I thought the non-movie exhibits were better.

The park is pretty well signposted, but there are a lot of trails, so using Gaia was helpful as well. The park is stunning, both up close, and far away. Some of the rock formations have been named. Some of the trails are paved and some are gravel. In general, the hiking is easy, though some trails have a bunch of steps. Stay tuned for even better photos from tomorrow's hiking there.

Stretching :)