“Winter Wonderland,” a quote from Michigan, - many years ago. Here at Glen Eyrie winter transforms the place wonderfully. E have had another white blessing. Our children from Missouri spend the weekend with us a s guests in the Pink House. We took them to Dorothy Falls at the end of Queen Canyon. Rick, ever the amateur geologist, had a blast looking at all the rocks and the exposed layers of rock formation in the canyon wall, never mind the flowing water.
The weather was in the sixties with sunshine, but on
Sunday we started getting snow. It did not really stick to the roads, but transformed the surroundings with about a two inch accumulation.
Oh yeah, we shared the experience of a mountain lion stalking turkeys in our front yard. The turkeys flew into the trees and the lion bounded off, back into the woods. (He did not look too hungry!) We didn’t get a picture because it all happened fairly quickly.
Monday was a wonderful day to see the snow covered trees and rocky crags. We took a lot of pictures and took even a ride through the Garden of the Gods, to see the clean white covering on the red rocks.
We unexpectedly had overnight guests.
The guests-services did not know that the kitchen was closed this morning; we had gotten a box-breakfast yesterday. Since the overnight guests usually have breakfast included, we cooperatively agreed to cook and serve breakfast at the Pink House and serve it in the gorgeous Pink House dining room. Our guests were delighted, as were we, to have a scrumptious warm breakfast served in style! One more week and we’ll move to the chalet, leaving the Pink House to another couple to manage for a month.
The cold spell gripping the heartland last weekend, also made life at Glen Eyrie difficult. We woke up to snow on Friday and although that melted away, we had freezing drizzle over the weekend. Our hike on Thursday was in sunshine and near seventy degrees; 
on Saturday we were shivering in a high temperature of 25 degrees.
Almost a fifty degree drop. The roads were icy and slick. Walking was difficult, but we baby-stepped and slid to the dining room at the castle three times on Saturday and once on Sunday. We took the car at night, it was more surefooted than we were. Monday stayed dreary, but the rest of the week was beautiful again.
Sunshine and cool wind, just to remind us that it is the middle of October. We still very much enjoy our stay and work here. We had guest for the entire week, and we are also filled up this weekend with overnight guests. That makes for work each day, to “turn over” the rooms for new guests. Next week we should have a bit of a reprieve from guests for a few days. 
This allows us to take some time off.
The weekend again looks full and busy, but we expect some personal company, and that will add to the fun as well.
Here we are again, at Glen Eyrie in Colorado Springs. I reviewed my posts from last year; (September 25, and a few in October) and found that not much has changed. The place is still very peaceful and wild-life abounds. Turkeys, deer, bighorn sheep, 
squirrels and rabbits,
just to name a few. There are snakes, a bob-cat, a bear, and they all claim this valley as their home. The animals tolerate the people, who visit here, pretty well. They do not act afraid, but do keep some distance from the people. The turkeys, deer and bighorns stay in groups usually.
We are Pink House managers for the month of October. This means we keep the guests in the three guest-rooms in clean towels and bedding. We have coffee and tea available and provide for the needs of our guests as may be needed. Many of our guests, just stay for bed and breakfast. The meals are provided in a central dining room, so we are not responsible for meal preparation. During conferences we often have guests who stay for a longer periods, and this makes our daytime schedule easier.
We schedule time off, when we can and take advantage of enjoying the beautiful surroundings. The weather has been fabulous the past week and we were able to repeat some of the hikes we did last year. We also visited Cheyenne Canyon State park and Helen Hunt Falls last Monday. Quite a view over the city and the Colorado plains, as we edged the mountains and traveled in the foothills of the Rockies.
On Wednesday morning on our way to breakfast I noticed a spilled garbage container. I joked, that it might have been a bear, who made the mess. To our surprise, this was true! We saw a well sized brown bear on the Castle lawn. As stated in one of our previous blogs, this is the home of much wild-life. Yet, the bear needed to be shooed away from the Castle area, because of the high density of people here; especially at breakfast time.
After breakfast, cleaning the rooms, and visiting with some of the guests, we hiked to Dorothy Falls. Although it only is about 3/4 mile form the Castle parking lot, it takes about an hour to get there.
The trail is rough and rocky, but the reward is great. The sun was out, the sky deep blue, 
the trees displayed their fall colors. An added benefit was, that we were ready for lunch, when we returned from the hike. A very nice morning walk to enjoy and appreciate the glory of creation.
