Manitou, Col, July 24th

Manitou, Col, July 24th

Dear little Mamma,
We arrived safely yesterday evening and found Mr. Parker at the train waiting for us. He took us up to the rooming house where George and Louise and the Moores were last year, where he had managed to save us a comfortable room (the last one in the house) and we are taking our meals at the Sunnyside Hotel just across the street. We are really pleasantly fixed and in this way the rates are less than in most cases--it costs us, board and room, eight dollars and a quarter a week each. The fashionable are four dollars a day. Our room although very plain has two windows with mountain views from each, has a closet, is lighted with electricity and is near the bathroom, and I am well satisfied. The views from the porches are very fine with old Pikes Peak towering over the ranges. Walter and Mr. Parker took a long walk after supper yesterday, but Mrs. Parker and I sat on the porch and rested.
This morning Mr. and Mrs. Parker, Mr. and Mrs. Nelson (a Kansas City bride and groom) and Walter and I took a three seated surrey and drove out eight miles to south Cheyenne Canyon where the scenery is wild and grand in the extreme with a rushing mountain stream which tears down the rocks in seven successive falls.
We walked up about two hundred and fifty steps to the top of the falls and the men folks did some more climbing over the bare rocks, but I thought I wouldn’t try to do too much at first.
I feel my old enthusiasm for the mountains and only wish that I could do the tramping I did in Switzerland. The air is magnificent. I am wearing my heavy dress waist and last night we slept with two blankets. I have unpacked my trunk, put my clean papers in the bureau drawers, and gotten pretty comfortably fixed for our two weeks stay.
Manitou is certainly an enchanting place--it is in a narrow valley surrounded on three sides by the mountains, and summer homes with finely kept lawns and beautiful flowers. An electric line runs from here to Colorado Springs which is a much larger place, and for that reason less attractive to me as a resort. Manitou is full of fine mineral springs and Walter has begun drinking already--he got up at six this morning and went down to the soda spring and drank a quart of the water.
There are no end to the fine excursions to be taken from here, but we won’t be able to go to nearly all the places, as carriages are expensive and I can walk so little, but we can see enough from the porch to pay us for coming.
When you go in a party the rates are much less. I only wish we could stay longer, but perhaps we may be fortunate enough to come again sometime.
I have some of the dear home pictures standing on the dresser and I can see Dearest sitting in the little rocker on the porch.
Now I must stop to write Jo a line before train time.
With very much love, Anna--