Big Horned Sheep at the Palmer Castle!!

Glen Eyrie

I finally made it out to the Palmer Castle here in Colorado Springs. I was unable to take the tour when my parents took it. The hiking is limited by permit and I have not been able to get in during the week to hike. It is currently a conference center so it is closed to the public on weekends. Makes it difficult to visit!

No relation.....darn it...I would have been living there the last 3 months otherwise!! : )

General William Palmer was a RR man. He moved out to CO to build the RR from Denver to Santa Fe. He moved to the area and built a house for his family. He decided to build an English Castle in the same location as the original house. Here are some pictures of the tour and some info on the Castle and the man behind it. Glen Eyrie is a Scottish name for Eagles home. The landscape architect was Scottish I believe.

http://www.navigators.org/us/ministries/gleneyrie/aboutus/history

view from the front porch!

This was the entrance to the castle and apparently the men retreated here while the ladies were in the sitting room after dinner!




The Castle has public Teas and this is now used as the tea room. It was the ladies sitting room.



There are over 700 acres of land and it is open to hike with a permit.



The hike to the water fall was cool!!! Reminded me of hikes up stream beds in NH!!


While hiking I ran into my First LARGE animals in CO!! luckily they were Big horned sheep and not Grizzlies!! They were only 10 feet away from the trail!! Then on the drive out they were 5 feet from the road.. I stopped to take a picture and drove fast...worried they might decide to charge the car!! That would leave a dent!! They had some of the horns in the Castle and I got to hold one!! One horn alone was a good 10 lbs!! They are some strong dudes!! Luckily as with most animals they are more afraid of us than we are of them!! while hiking a runner came by and the animals retreated fast...they had been posing for me for a good few minutes.. oh well.








These were by the trail on my way out...about 10 to 20 feet away!!!




You can bearly see the big guy on the right after the runner ran by and scared the sheep into the woods...so much for the photo shoot!!! : )


These guys were about 5 feet from the side of the road on the way out!!!