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| Oh the butterflies! |
Letterbox
Adventure March 21, 2013
An awesome day!
Both Courtney and Tina agreed this letterbox adventure was a fun filled experience with excitement around every corner! This day consisted of two places a dentist office and Focus on the Family.
Tina texted Courtney on Wednesday night: Can I get a ride to the Barnes and Nobles tomorrow I need to pick up a book for my Dad's birthday present. Courtney was happy to help me out and so the plan was hatched.(As I recall, I texted you about something else entirely and it morphed into you bumming a ride...) She'd come over at ten am to pick me up and we'd spend the day running a couple of errands and having a ton of fun.
Thursday came and with it Courtney arrived shortly after ten in the morning.(So I accidentally slept in a little, and I had to put gas in the car, otherwise we wouldn't have gotten too far. It was the slowest moving gas nozzle and at that point in the morning it was still cold.) We chatted a bit and then I locked up my house and we both hopped into her car. Before I could even get my seatbelt buckled Courtney had flung the Letterbox bag into my lap. "Your going to need this! Pull out our clue book!" She said with enthusiasm. I handed her our clue book and she flipped through it and pointed out the Sonrisas Hermosas clue. This letterbox is hidden at a dentist office, to get this box you must go during their office hours.(Mon-Thur 8am- 5pm) And today was perfect, they were open and we had time before we had to run our errands so off to the letterbox location we did go.
Courtney and I both know only one way to get to this letterbox. Drive the old bus route to Liberty High School that would get us to the area. Courtney said she'd never driven to the high school before. We both attended Liberty High School; we actually met while going to Liberty High School. We rode the bus together - I was a senior she was a freshmen and she said to me at the bus stop "I forgot my glasses." and we've been friends ever since:) (I ate her chips at lunch time, followed her home and proclaimed: Hey, I know your dog!!)We both remember Liberty High School as being surrounded by a field full of cows. Now there's a church nearby, a few office buildings, and Powers Blvd runs directly behind the school. The school still looks the same just the surroundings have changed. (Many of the roads were not there all those years ago when we attended... or at least never went as far as they do now.)
We found the twin office buildings with ease. Courtney navigated the parking lot like a pro and parked the car. We both jumped out. I commented that the letterbox bag felt ten pounds lighter. She said she had cleaned it out. I was so thankful for that. Together we walked up to the building. An interesting building with a tinted glass wall and smack dab in the center of that wall was an elevator. I wondered how on earth we were suppose to catch that elevator from out here then I noticed the two glass doors on either side of the elevator. Courtney had been thinking the same thing. Most buildings which have a glass wall like that have the doors in the middle not an elevator. We opened the door and stepped into a very clean neat and spacious lobby.
According to our clue we were actually on the second floor though it feels like your on the first. Our clue pointed us to the direction of the dentist office directly in front of us. Courtney told me I had to ask for the letterbox. I happily accepted the great honor bestowed on me and polite as I could I asked the receptionist for the office letterbox. She said she had it and asked us to wait for a moment while she finished her phone call which was only a few seconds. She rummaged in the cabinet behind her while commenting to us that she had nearly forgotten about the letterbox because no one has asked for it in a year. She found the box and handed it to us. The office was empty, no Muggles around so we pulled up a couple of chairs and a corner of table and dove into the letterbox box. Sure enough the last person to stamp the book had been there in 2011. We stamped our sheep doctor stamp and stamped the cute letterbox stamp into our stamp book. Packed it all up and handed the box back thanking the receptionist as we left the office.
We happily hopped into the car and Courtney flipped to another clue in our clue book. Two clues actually, and both located in the visitor center at Focus on the Family. For those of you who haven't heard of Focus on the Family it's a Christian ministry that reaches millions of people world wide with its books, radio and television broadcasts. The Focus on the Family visitor center opened in 1994 and since then three million people have come through its doors. Although Courtney and I have both lived in Colorado Springs for a long time and we've driven by Focus of the Family off and on over the years neither of us have ever been there, yet we've both been curious about the place.
We both walked in unsure of what we would find and a little nervous. We were greeted by a nice old lady at the front desk who happily welcomed us to Focus on the Family and asked if we were first time guests. We were. She asked us to sign in on their computer system and put on a sticker. Courtney took an extra sticker and put it in our stamp book. Then the nice old lady gave us the run down of the place. The movie theater was on the side to our left and the bookstore was on the right she even told us there was complimentary free hot beverages too. We decided to head toward the movie theater. When we walked in there was a movie playing about the founders of Focus on the Family and the theater was completely empty. The seats looked super comfy so I just had to sit in one and check it out. We sat in the back row watched the movie for a little bit. Then I told Courtney about a dream I had the other night about letterboxing.(Chocolate or Vanilla LOL!!) She said it was funny and I'd have to add it to the blog sometime. We also took the moment to review and look over our clues for the two Letterboxes hidden in the visitor center. Just as we were finishing up a family came in and we decided to let them enjoy the theater we needed to move on.
We walked into the main room, lobby if you will, and pondered the walls of history and the displays. We saw the three story tall slide and the long line to it. And we both chickened out. (You saw the pictures in the last post!! The only thing I could think about really was what if I slide and my purse spews it's contents forth?? Well?? It would be a mess! I couldn't bear the thought of cleaning...) That slide is more intimidating in person then it looks from the roadside! We decided it was safer to check out the balcony and the beautiful view of the front range. The view truly is spectacular but most Colorado views are. Pikes Peak was breathtaking this morning with a snow covered peak and just enough clouds to look mysterious. The Air Force Academy Chapel and Stadium were easily seen and danced in the shadows of clouds assuring that no two people would take the same photograph. Above us a plane towing a glider could be seen and the sun shone merrily in the sky. Courtney asked me to stand under one of the large lantern light fixtures on the side of the building and I did I pointed up to the lantern light and said "how's this for a bright idea?" a couple of people laughed. We went back inside. We wandered around the bookstore looking at all they had to offer everything from mugs to books to fun T-shirts and other souvenirs.(I liked the parody ones, Thelight looks like Twilight... and especially I liked the shirt with the cupcake, Sweet Jesus!) We left there and found ourselves in a quiet little art gallery room. The pictures reminded me of Thomas Kinkade paintings but were done by a different artist.(G. Harvey I believe it was.) Nonetheless, we enjoyed the paintings and quiet gallery. We found the complimentary hot beverages coffee and hot tea. Yay hot tea!(Yay! Free stuff!) We helped ourselves to a super hot cup of Lipton black tea sweetened with a little sugar. It was nearly too hot to drink. Courtney opted for lids because those letterboxes were calling our names it was time to get down to business.
We took the stairs down to the children's play area and found ourselves face to face with a giant plane! Ok, maybe not giant, but it sure was big and unexpected. There was also a soda shop called Whit's End. That's where the letterbox clue begins for us. Courtney was reading the clue trying to get her bearings and I was just looking around taking in the scope of the place. I said "Courtney there's chess pieces on the roof." a nearby woman over heard me and told us about a scavenger hunt that Focus on the Family provides for the children. There's three different hunts and there's crazy stuff hidden all over the place. She lead us to the little table where the scavenger hunt papers were. We decided to do all three plus hunt for our Letterboxes!(We only finished one!)
Sipping tea and looking for items for the scavenger hunt and following clues lead to an amazing adventure. There was so much to take in! Different painted murals and scenes and fun props and rooms with different themes and I never did find that bowling ball.(I never found that wig...) We found the first location for the letterbox by the abandoned mind shaft but try as we might we couldn't lay our hands on letterbox itself. We decided to move on - maybe there's another abandoned mine. There wasn't but oh, the rooms, the themes! The Narnia room was a highlight for sure. We got to walk right through the wardrobe and into Narnia! Very magical! We climbed up into the plane. Courtney even climbed through a tunnel! Still that first letterbox eluded us. We searched and searched but no letterbox.(and searched and searched some more and stuck our fingers into corners that in my imagination was full of spiders...)
The second clue mentions an atrium and a green garden hose. We hadn't seen those either. We had gone around the whole thing twice. I suggested we go around again but in reverse maybe something would pop out at us. We found Whit's office and we found the theater room empty and seized the opportunity to jumped up on the stage and dance and act silly. We checked out the costumes and found a few more items for our scavenger hunts but no atrium, no green garden hose. No letterbox. At one point I thought it was outside at the picnic area so we went outside and got locked out! So we had to walk around the building and enter through the main doors again.(That will teach us! Although, the air was nice, it must have been 2000 degrees in the building! Well maybe not, but it felt like it to me, Tina and I had to take off our jackets... at which point her sticker from earlier promptly got stuck to her butt and stayed there...)
Still no atrium. We went around the play area again. Doing one last thorough investigation of the mine shaft and came up empty handed. We concluded it possibly had fallen and gotten picked up by a muggle. We wandered a bit more and just when we'd nearly given up Courtney spotted the most beautiful green garden hose I'd ever seen! I've never been so happy to see a garden hose! Courtney discovered the letterbox right in the atrium right near the garden hose. We zipped over to Whit's End and plunked ourselves down at a table to do our stamping. Yay we finally found a letterbox! We returned the letterbox to its rightful place in the atrium and then we took some pictures of the atrium. For a stairwell it certainly captured our imagination with its beautiful garden murals and all the little butterflies on the walls and suspended from the ceiling.
We decided we had exhausted the play area. Though we had a ton of fun we really needed to attend to our errands. We left the building embracing the fresh air as we walked outside up a path to the car. We were a little disappointed we didn't find both Letterboxes but happy we found one letterbox and finished one scavenger hunt:) the only downside was it was so hot inside! Overall the experience was a good one and if you get the chance to go to Focus on the Family I'd recommend going. There's at least one great letterbox there and don't miss out on the scavenger hunt they provide. It's a lot of fun!
P.S. About that letterbox we couldn't find... when I went to Atlasquest to log our days finds, I listed that I couldn't find it(though we tried) and the status went from active to unknown. I checked the whole log of finds for that particular letterbox and the LAST 4 PEOPLE who looked for it couldn't find it. It seems it went missing sometime between 2011 and 2012.
