Rasila's brother Belden's Graduation, Colorado Springs, CO

Since we'd been to 2 of her other brother's (Seton's) graduations, we decided to attend one of Belden's. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, with an MBA.

We flew up Thursday night on Southwest Airlines, trying out their new service to Denver. It was a smooth flight, with us arriving at 8:30 PM or so. I had reserved an intermediate car at Budget Rent A Car, but they were running out and offered an SUV. I said "no," but they then said I had to wait for a car to be cleaned, so I changed my mind since we had a 90 mile drive to our hotel. We ended up with a full size GMC Yukon!

The drive down was smooth and the vehicle had XM Radio, so we tuned into the Jimmy Buffett concert from Irvine on Radio Margaritaville and sung along the whole way down. We arrived at the Fairfield Inn at about 10:40 PM.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the hotel (included, yah!), then went to the audaciously named World Arena for Belden's Graduation Ceremony. It took the requisite 2 hours and we then went to lunch at Panera Bread, and then drove around Garden of the Gods. We had dinner that night at the Craftwood Inn in Manitou Springs.

The next day we went and rode the Manitou and Pikes Peak Railroad to the top of Pikes Peak. It was a fun trip, with the top being a snowstorm (see the photos)! This took most of the middle of the day and we went back to the hotel and used the gym before dinner. We had dinner that night at Walter's Bistro, an outstanding place that I would have driven right by!

The next morning, we went to the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, CO. We took the guided tour and thoroughly enjoyed it! They had a traveling Darwin exhibit too. We had lunch at Joanie's Deli, then high tailed it back to DIA to return the car and fly back home.