Manitou Springs and Visiting Friends

(AF Academy, Colorado Springs, CO) Hi 93 Lo 60 – We had a full day planned so we didn’t linger long this morning.

We headed about 45 minutes west of Colorado Springs to Woodland Park to visit with friends. On the way we stopped in Manitou Springs for lunch and to look around the downtown area. It’s a neat little mountain town with a lot of character, and the people are so friendly! We had lunch at the Stagecoach Inn.




We ate on their outside patio with a brook down below us.


The food was excellent. I had a veggie pita and Jim had a hamburger. There wasn’t a wait and we were out in no time to check out the town.

One shop had all these gnomes dressed in various college colors. 


The stores are so neat and colorful. The storefronts out here in the west are so different, and I love it.


Just outside of town is the famous Manitou Incline.

We could hardly believe it when we heard about this. It's the world's highest stairway. It goes up 2,100 feet in only 0.9 mile! We stopped at an ice cream shop for a cone and a lady there told us a little more about it. She said that halfway up there's a "bailout point" where you can leave the stairway and take a trail back down to ground level. But after that, you have to go either up or down on the stairs. It’s not easy and it’s a long way straight up. We sure couldn’t do it, we can barely walk across the street without getting winded. :)

After our walk around Manitou Springs we went about 15 more miles west to Woodland Park to meet with Jack and Danielle Mayer. Jack is almost a legend in the RV'ing community for his knowledge and experience in the full time lifestyle. I’ve chatted with Jack online many times over the years, and Jim has emailed him for advice on different RV-related matters. Jack and Danielle have a beautiful, custom-built, 43-foot New Horizon fifth wheel that he pulls with a heavy duty truck. What a grand setup!


We enjoyed a tour of their rig and learning about the quality construction of New Horizons fifth wheels. Thanks Jack and Danielle for your time and hospitality. We hope to see you again down the road.

We left there and came back home. It was starting to get cloudy in the mountains, but for a change there was no afternoon rainstorms. We did see a lot of the burned out areas from the big fires in the area last month. Many homes were destroyed, but many more were saved due to the great work of the firefighters.

Now they're having problems with mudslides when it rains in the mountains because of the lack of vegetation in the burned out areas.


We stopped at KFC for dinner on the way home and settled in for the evening. It was a wonderful day.