Actually this is prime time for the aspen's. They are starting there turn to gold as we speak...or umm write. They should be this way for the next few weeks. Manitou is nice, if you don't have housing yet, try to rent a cabin in Green Mountain falls or Chipeta Park, they both have great places in the mountains less than 10 minutes to the springs. Cripple Creek is nice, it has a lot of casinos now so the history and feel of the city has gone down quite a bit. You can walk through the gold mines in Cripple Creek, that was pretty neat. Continue out 24 a little more and hit Florissant Fossil Beds National Park, go out further and if you fish there is Eleven Mile Canyon(a Gold Medal Troust river, with Catch and relaease only past a certain point...man there are some beauties in there). Back towards the srpings, hit Manitou, Garden of the Gods, Old Colorado City (Meadow Muffins is an excelent place for a quick and LARGE lunch or dinner). Do Pikes Peak, just remember, it's frickin cold up there this time of year, Royal Gorge was nice, but for the money they charge to get in there we decided it was just not worth it, try the AF Academy...they have an awesome cathedral, go to 7-Falls (especially at dusk and stay till dark for the lights), the zoo is actually really nice pearched up on the side of the mountain and the Will Rogers Shrine just a short walk up the mountain from the zoo is cool as well. Oh yeah. try to drive Gold Camp road out of the Springs, or drive Rampart Range road out of the Garden of the Gods...both excellent views and gave my wife the willies driving that close to the edge of the mountain without any guardrails...not to mention the truck we saw that apparently didn't make it around a turn and rolled down into the trees a couple hundred feet below. We did see lots of Elk along Rampart Range road out of the G.O.G's. You really can't go wrong with anything you do here, just make sure you spend most of your time in the mountains, after all, that is usually why people come here anyway, so make sure you hit them hard. I will try to think of more stuff to do down there in the next few days or so.
