Yesterday I snuck out of my conference to see the rocky mountains close up – the views were spectacular and I wanted to share a little bit of them with you today.

This video was taken with my flip cam and we were only halfway up the mountain:

Right after this I had the (terrible) idea to see what it was like to run in the thin mountain air. The good news was that I couldn’t run fast enough to actually feel any burn in my legs. The bad news was that it took me like 15 minutes to catch my breath.

Check out this pic I took of a lake we came across: the big white mountain is Pike’s Peak and that is where we were headed.

It took an hour to actually get up to the peak of the mountain; not ashamed to say that at times my hands got a little sweaty because on either side of the car there were 1000 foot drops. Once we got to the top I went and made this random video of me wandering around and looking over the edge of the mountain:

The views here were amazing: 60-70 miles! You could see the plains and the American desert. It really was fantastic. The air was also very thin and I found myself out of breath a few times in the cold air (40 degrees with snow up there).

After this leg of the trip we stopped by “The Garden of the Gods” where they have some amazing red rocks. I had a chance to take some pics with my iPhone, but none of these will do either of these places any justice. Check em out:

So, I must highly recommend checking out the mountains if you are out West. It was a great experience with a great group. For something like this I always like to go with a tour group. It adds a little bit of fun getting to know random people that you otherwise would never had met. My group and our tour guide was fantastic – stay tuned: later on I will be uploading some video that shows what it is like to drive in a rickety tour bus with 1000 foot drops of either side of you…