Colorado: Manitou Springs & Cliff Dwellings

This is my favorite picture.

It was really a treat to be able to spend a couple days in Colorado and spend time with my cousins. They're the only part of my immediate family that lives out of Los Angeles. So to be able to be part of their lives for a couple days and have this adventure with Molly and Julia was the best thing #familyisthebest

Julia suggested this little town — Manitou Springs — and more specifically visiting the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. 

The Cliff Dwellings are as they sound — dwellings in a cliff. More specifically, they're Anasazi ruins that date back 800 to 1000 years old!  I thought it was interesting that this was not the original location of the 40 room site. It was moved from McElmo Canyon to protect it from looters and relic pot-hunters (according to their website). But you wouldn't be able to tell. 

It reminded me a lot of the Montezuma Castle National Monument I visited in Arizona, on my first road trip to Nashville, except this time we could actually go through all the rooms.

More than that, it included interactive elements like grinding corn, good-tasting elements like getting some home-made fudge in their gift shop, and for us, a real live thunder and rainstorm to experience what life was like in harsher times. Also, shout out to the quarter horse that was well worth the money and kept galloping five minutes later. #justkeepgoing

After our time in history, we went a little more modern day at the cute downtown nearby. They had an arcade there and Molly won pretty big. We had to get back to Pueblo, but there we could have spent a good couple days exploring this city.