We met Barb’s sister Kathleen and her husband David for a nice lunch in a restaurant on the edge of Colorado Springs.  It was good to see them, but they had work-related commitments and so we were soon back on the road.  We stopped at the Garden of the Gods Visitor Center for a quick orientation before retiring to a motel — rain was predicted — from which we walked to a 20-plex movie theatre where we saw “Boyhood”.   Next morning we returned to the Garden and spent a leisurely time enjoying the fantastic formations.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the geology:

The outstanding geologic features of the park are the ancient sedimentary beds of deep-red, pink, and white sandstones, conglomerates and limestone that were deposited horizontally, but have now been tilted vertically and faulted by the immense mountain building forces caused by the uplift of the Rocky Mountains and the Pikes Peak massif. The following Pleistocene Ice Age  resulted in erosion and glaciation of the rock, creating the present rock formations. Evidence of past ages can be read in the rocks: ancient seas, eroded remains of ancestral mountain ranges, alluvial fans, sandy beaches, and great sand dune fields.

The resulting rocks had different shapes: toppled, overturned, stood-up, pushed around and slanted. Balanced Rock, a Fountain formation, is a combination of coarse sand, gravel, silica and hematite. It is hematite that gives the large balancing rock rock its red hue. It toppled off of a ledge, first resting on sand that was gradually worn away at the base. Gateway Rock and Three Graces are stood-up rocks that had been pushed up vertically. The Tower of Babel is Lyons Formation, a stone made of fine sand from an ancient beach.

When we left the Gardens we moved on to visit Barb’s sister Audrey and her husband Mike, who live in the Wet Mountains near the unincorporated community of Beulah, Colorado, near Pueblo.  Stay tuned for an account of that visit.