The Garden of the Gods (Colorado part II)

...Colorado Springs' downtown might be rather disappointing, but this is not so for the surrounding landscape: mountains and rocks prelude the known-to-the-eye Far-West sceneries. This is the case of the Garden of the Gods, a public park located half an hour from Colorado Springs' downtown. [the rest is a Wiki quote...sorry, I feel very lazy today!]

This park contains conglomerate sandstone hogback formations belonging geologically to the Fountain Formation. The name Colorado is said to come from the color of this sandstone.

The hogbacks, so named because they resemble the backs and spines of a pig, are ridges of sandstone whose layers are tilted. Instead of lying horizontally, some layers are even vertically oriented. Each hogback can range up to several hundred feet long, and the tallest (called The Kissing Camels, see pic on the left) rises to a height of 320 feet tall.