Colorado Springs Is Jumping

When you arrive in Denver for your Rocky Mountain vacation, you might be tempted to point your rental car straight toward those snowy peaks and hit the gas. But there’s a lot to be said for first saving some love for Colorado Springs, just 50 miles to the south, before you head for the hills.

After all, there are not a lot of places where you can…

Land a 737 Passenger Jet

We’re cruising pretty low for a 737 MAX over a populated area — barely 10,000 feet — but this is going to be a really short trip: From Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) to Washington Dulles (IAD), just 30 miles away.

Victoria, my first officer, is flicking switches and turning dials. As pilot, I have one job to do: Bring this baby in on Dulles Runway 19C, which at the moment is a pale gray line on the horizon. I grasp the yoke handle with both hands. My eyes are riveted to the display on the cockpit panel, alternately turning the handle left and right to remain level, pushing or pulling on the yoke column to control the pitch of this plane’s nose.

“You want to get your bearings?” Victoria asks. I nod. She flicks a switch, and my 737 MAX freezes in mid-air, the northern Virginia countryside spreading green and still below.

Just about everyone has fooled around with computerized pilot programs, using a joy stick to fly pixelated planes across laptop screen-sized landscapes. But this…this is something else. I’m not actually thousands of feet above Virginia, obviously; I am in the windowless lower level of Colorado Springs’ Hotel Polaris, a brand-new resort/convention center located right at the north gate of the United States Air Force Academy. Sleekly styled to match the mid-century military academy up the hill, the hotel’s décor is steeped in Air Force iconography, from its wall-sized aeronautical art works to the wing-shaped front desk.

It’s a short elevator ride from the lobby to this full-scale exact replica of a 737 cockpit (they also have two F-16 simulators), each switch and dial fully functional and linked to a computer that can not only replicate every major world airport, but also its exact weather conditions at this precise moment.

Befitting the hotel’s close ties to the Academy (it is owned by a foundation led by Academy graduates), this is the one and only flight simulator of its type open to the public.

I swallow hard and indicate I’m ready for my final approach. With the push of a button, the sounds of engines and rushing air surround me. A nagging, urgent computerized voice announces every 100-foot drop. “Banking!  Banking!” the voice barks when I tilt too far. The runway is approaching. I hear a familiar “clunk” as Victoria lowers the landing gear.

I’ll not bore you, dear reader, with the details of my exploits, only to say my buttery smooth landing would have made Chuck Yeager cry.

Is that the sound of the passengers applauding? No, it’s just the next customer. My half-hour is up.

Take a Train to the Top of the World

There are 67 14,000-plus-foot mountain summits in the lower 48 states, and to reach the top of nearly all of them you need three things I lack: Good hiking boots, peak physical condition, and the necessary level of insanity.

Then there’s Pike’s Peak, visible from nearly every point in Colorado Springs, with a summit   reachable by a cog rail train that, with a few interruptions for equipment upgrades, has been ferrying the more timid of us to the mountain’s 14,115-foot top since 1891.

Board your rail car at the quaint lower station and find your assigned seat (they’re configured 3-2; the best views overall are on the left side, heading uphill).

Gazing out as the train chugs upward at a ridiculously steep incline of up to 25 percent, I feel as if I’m on a slow-motion airliner, watching the horizon spread far, far beyond Colorado Springs. Our live narrator, whose pun-filled spiel would make a Disney Jungle Cruise skipper blush, insists we’re seeing as far as Kansas, 165 miles away.

The doors slide open at the summit, where a new visitors center houses a nifty museum and — in a tradition dating back to 1888 — freshly baked donuts, made with an ultra-high-altitude recipe that’s so top-secret, employees have to sign nondisclosure agreements.

I sit at an enormous glass window, the sun in my face, the plains and mountains rolling to infinity, a hot donut in one hand, a steaming coffee in the other.

Poet Katharine Lee Bates, sitting mere feet from this spot, was inspired to write the song that for my money ought to be our National Anthem, “America the Beautiful.” Most people say she was inspired by the purple mountain majesties and the fruited plains.

But I’ll bet the donuts had something to do with it.

Visit Santa Claus Year-Round

You can also drive to the top of Pike’s Peak, and those who do are doubly rewarded with a chance to visit Santa Claus at his Rocky Mountain home, no matter what the month.

Santa’s Workshop was opened by the Haggard Family in 1956, and if you’re lucky you’ll encounter one or two of them as you make your way around the steeply inclined, 25-acre, 27-ride amusement park. The place is perched right on the lower slope of Pike’s Peak, so be prepared to do a lot of uphill climbing as you wander from the vintage Tilt-a-Whirl to Santa’s Ferris Wheel to Santa’s Slide — a tall bundle of candy canes topped with a towering figure of the Jolly Old Elf himself. On most days, you’ll find Mr. and Mrs. Claus holding court in their log cabin chalet.

More than one parent has escaped the park’s outdoor frenzy with a quiet moment in Santa’s Chapel, a little retreat featuring a vintage manger scene, proof that Santa hasn’t forgotten how he got this gig in the first place.

Taste Test Eight Spring Waters at Their Source

At last, there’s a family-friendly use for those kitschy shot glasses every tourist destination sells: In Manitou Springs, just outside Colorado Springs, you can use that glass to sample the waters from eight natural springs that bubble to the surface at spots scattered around downtown. Local merchants will happily give you a map and show you where to start.

I began my taste test at one end of Manitou Avenue and worked my way from one spring to another, assessing the subtle differences among them. I’m no water sommelier, but I got consistent notes of Alka Seltzer with a whisper of match tip.

Don’t leave town without dropping a few bucks at Manitou Springs’ block-long Penny Arcade district.

Walk with the Gods

Europeans quickly dubbed the fanciful, red-rocked landscape at what is now a remote corner of Colorado Springs “Garden of the Gods” — but they were a few centuries late to the party: Ancient members of the Ute Nation had long since designated the place, with its jaw-dropping array of towering, rust-colored monoliths, as the birthplace of humanity.

On some days, it seems like all of humanity has funneled into the 1,341-acre site — quite possibly America’s most spectacular free public park. Late comers (and by that, I mean anyone showing up after 9 a.m.) will find its parking lots jammed to capacity. During the summer, your best bet may be to park at the nearby Visitor and Nature Center and enter the park via a free shuttle bus. A short ride drops you off at the Central Garden Trail, where paved pathways lead you amongst enormous rock formations, elegantly carved by wind and rain. Squint a bit and you may spot a red-tailed hawk or two soaring amongst the countless swooping, singing white-throated swifts.

Visit a Disinterred Zombie Airplane

My eyes are dazzled by the array of restored-like-new vintage airplanes at Colorado Springs’ National Museum of World War II Aviation. But pretty soon I’m wondering about the scores of oil pans strategically placed under each plane…along with the healthy amount of leaked oil in each one.

I’m embarrassed to ask my docent, Matt, about all that leaking oil, but the question seems to positively delight him.

“If a plane’s not leaking oil,” he smiles, “it’s not flying!”

Indeed, all 20 planes on the museum’s exhibition floor fly, and often: They are much in demand at air shows. Each one required lots of loving care to become airworthy after all these years — but Matt points with extra pride at an imposing, twin-tailed P-38 Lightning fighter plane.

“That thing was buried at an airfield in New Guinea during the war,” he says, explaining that was the standard method for disposing of worn-out warplanes. This one was excavated in the 1990s and restored here at the museum’s facility.

“Now,” Matt declares, “it’s the only flying P-38 in the world.”

Don’t get the idea that the thing was resurrected, intact, from the South Pacific mud. Nearby are some photos that show the P-38 when it was found: A barely-recognizable hunk of rusted, twisted metal.

Matt gestures toward a similar nightmare of rusted refuse standing, in person, against a nearby wall. He identifies it as a P-47, and I have to take his word for it. The thing had been buried alongside that beautifully restored P-38 across the way.

“We call this one ‘Bones,’” he says fondly. “Believe it or not, it can be restored.”

He tilts his head. “But not anytime soon.”

Tour a 19^th Century Castle

You’ve got to hand it to 19^th century railroad barons: They did what they wanted to do. Take William Palmer, President of the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, who saw an environmentally delicate clearing halfway up a red rock canyon and said, “I think I’d like to build a Tudor castle there.”

And so, in 1871, Palmer built a castle he named Glen Eyrie. Inevitably, years later, nature sent floods and boulders roaring down the canyon, rendering the place uninhabitable. In 1953 the Evangelical Christian group The Navigators bought the place as their new headquarters, and more than 70 years later visitors can drive up the canyon, tour the castle, and imagine old Bill up here snifting brandy and sighing, “It’s good to be the Baron.”

 

It’s a short drive from Hotel Polaris to Colorado Springs Airport. My flight home is already boarding when I reach the gate. I trudge down the jetway and step onto the plane — a Boeing 737 MAX. The pilot is standing in the cockpit doorway. I give him a knowing nod, letting him know:

“I’ve got your back.”