DAY 36: Manitou Springs, CO - I Thought You Were A Different Liz!

Monday, July 6 - Manitou Springs, CO

Well, everyone will be happy & relieved to know that Chuck FINALLY found his pretzel sticks and chocolate covered raisins!  Yep, we found a Sam's Club.  Oh happy day!

AND, he was so happy about finding a Sam's Club that he installed an Ipod adaptor in the dash of the motorhome for Liz.  HOT DOG!!  And now I'm really happy!

Yep, today was a good day....after finding the Sam's Club and Chuck installing the Ipod adaptor, we headed into downtown Manitou Springs for some ice cream to celebrate.  Picture this; temperature around 75 degrees with a soft breeze; sunny with fluffy white clouds; quaint ice cream shop in the midst of unique little boutique stores along Main Street which has cute little ice cream tables and chairs perched on the sidewalk......are you seeing it in your head???  Good!  Are you TOTALLY jealous right now??  Good!

We had arranged to have dinner tonight with a nice guy named Israel that we met last October when we were up here in Colorado.  We had met him at the Honda shop while getting a tire replaced and, what made him unique was he was riding a Harley.  He wasn't there shopping for a Honda, he just liked the Honda store.  So, we struck up a conversation while the tire was being replaced; exchanged email addresses and went on our separate ways.  Soon after that trip, we would occasionally email each other, but just every so often.  Well, several months ago, the email communication became more frequent and we all were getting to be good friends via the internet.  Since we were coming through Colorado Springs, and he was keeping up with the daily Blogs, we all decided to meet at a Mexican Restaurant close by tonight.  We connected up with him, had dinner and talked like we'd known each other for years!   We were talking about this, that and just a little bit of everything when the subject came around to how we all started communicating with each other in the first place.  I relayed the story of the Honda store and the conversation we had there when Israel asked, "You mean, we've met before?"  I was kinda surprised as I figured he remembered what I remembered, and I said, "Yes, you don't remember meeting us at the Honda store?"  Well,  I think he had the same surprised look on his face that we had on ours, and then said, "I thought you were a different Liz".  Chuck and I looked at each other and broke out laughing.......Soooooooo, to make this long story slightly shorter, he didn't remember us like we remembered him, however, we all know each other now and I know we'll be friends for a long time.  Classic story, though, don't ya think??

After we left Israel, we headed back into Manitou Springs to see the Seven Falls.  The drive to get there was pretty cool all by itself.  The canyon you have to drive through is incredible and worth the trip on its own, but once we got to the Seven Falls, we were really impressed.  You take this elevator (14 stories tall) that is "inside" the mountain up to a vantage point where you can see this huge 181' waterfall that makes a total of seven distinct waterfalls coming down a solid cliff of pikes peak granite.  About now, its getting to be dusk and I had heard that after sundown, they put colored lights on the waterfalls giving it an even neater look.  Now, I must mention that you can "choose" to take the mountain elevator OR you can walk all 5 million steps getting to the top.  Chuck and I chose the elevator.  SURPRISE!!!   But it was just a beautiful site to see both in the daylight and at night.   Personally, I think the colored lights "cheapened" it, but hey, who am I???

And that was our day.  Poor Murphy had a bummer of a day staying in the RV, but we did pick him up a stuffed Senator John McCain doll while downtown since Murphy is a Republican.  Check it out........I just hope he doesn't start the "humping" thing again......

Dad, thanks for the awesome deep email today.  I love these kind of conversations with you!!