Colorado Springs - Seven Falls and the Cliff Dwellings

Today we continue our boring travelogue on Bill and Agnes's Visit to Colorado Springs by looking at two of the other places we visited: Seven Falls and the Manitou Springs Cliff Dwellings Museum.

Seven Falls is - as you might suspect from the name - a series of seven waterfalls which cascade down a very steep cliff face. It's supposed to be especially beautiful at night, when the falls are illuminated with colored lights; however, as geezers in training who need to be in bed early, we visited early in the day. This is what the falls look like from the "Eagle's Nest," an observation platform across the valley...

If you look closely, or if you click on the image to view it at full size, you can see a very long set of very steep stairs that climb the cliffs next to the falls. Yes, we climbed those stairs all the way to the top. This is the warning that you see at the bottom...

And this is the view back down from the first landing...

Once at the top, you can proceed on via a series of trails to other beautiful vistas...

And other warnings...

Eventually, you reach "Midnight Falls," which is very beautiful and serene, but not as spectacular as the actual Seven Falls...

After climbing the 224 steps to the top of Seven Falls, we weren't in the mood to climb another 185 steps to the Eagles Nest observation platform, so we opted to take the elevator...

Having seen Seven Falls, we still had time to travel on to the town of Manitou Springs to visit the Cliff Dwellings Museum...

I must admit to being a little disappointed in this museum. It did feature a reconstruction of an old Anasazi cliff dwelling, but the rest of the site was far more gift shop than museum. Here are a few pictures of the cliff dwellings themselves...

And of the intrepid tourists who climbed around through the narrow tunnels...

On the whole, we enjoyed the cliff dwellings, but were disappointed that there was far less museum than gift shop. It's worth a visit, but is less educational than you might expect.

Tomorrow, we finish up our travelogue with a visit to the Royal Gorge - from the bottom and from the top. Be here. But first, we have to go back to work. Sigh.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo