We almost didn’t make it to our new years trip to Colorado Springs and we had to shorten our trip because of a sick pup and a winter storm.

We spent most of New Years Eve at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, I love this little zoo that is tucked into side of the mountain.

The Africa exhibit is so amazing, we have fed the giraffes and the elephants here.

The weather was nice and warm and comfortable.

The kids always love to find places to play along the way.

There is also a really good coffee shop in the zoo, so that made Cory and I very happy. We both got the blackberry latte, it was so good! The lavender latte is also amazing.

After our time at the zoo, we went back to our campsite to play a bit. Emmy and I took Humphry on a little hike.

Cory and I love kombucha, but these two love it even more and stole ours, they crack me up! Around dinner time we grabbed a piazza and drove into Garden of the Gods.

My phone doesn’t take great pictures but it was so light out even with just half a moon. After eating we went out for a night hike and it was so much fun.

Garden of the Gods is a must visit (and free) anytime we are in Colorado Springs.

Dogs are allowed as well to come with you.

Humphry even allowed us to put his puffer jacket on him.

We had planned on watching the fireworks that are launched from Pikes Peak at 9 PM but both places we were told were great viewing options were a bust. It was also cloudy around the peak so we only saw a few fireworks. We had a great time regardless. We had a Champagne toast back at our campsite, a fake new years countdown and in bed by 10 PM.

On new years morning we were excited to go explore the Cave of the Winds.

We have visited before when Cannon was a tiny baby, I think I was also pregnant with Emmy at the time.

We grabbed some much needed Starbucks because we forgot to bring coffee with us and drove up to the caves.

We did the Discovery Adventure Tour with a tour guide and loved it. He did a great job sharing fun stories and interesting information about the cave.

I have a little bit of claustrophobia so I would never be able to do a cave tour that has you crawling on your belly to get though. This tour was fine for me but hearing about how the tours used to be was crazy, 8 hours of squeezing through tiny spaces, hard no from me!

There is also a haunted lantern tour that is dark and spooky, kids have to be at least eight to participate so that might be fun in the future.

The tour was about an hour and the kids did great not running around or touching the caves. This gives me hope that we can do more tours when traveling abroad.

After the caves we went to Red Rocks Open Space for a hike.

We choose a loop that was around three miles, I am not exactly sure how far because my watch died while we were hiking, I forgot to pack my charging cord.

The hike was really interesting, and the kids liked the section with steps into the rocks.

After our hike we had to go back and pack up camp. There was a winter storm coming in overnight into Monday and I didn’t want to be towing home in bad weather. We got home before the snow and in time to make dinner.

We would have loved more time in Colorado Springs as there is always more fun things to do but we had a great time while we were there.