What Inspires You?

In our recent travels, this question was answered......again and again!
The people we met in every state we visited.....were so helpful and friendly. Asking for directions on Rodeo Drive....car window to car window....was a blessed experience. Even in the traffic of Las Vegas.....we had a similar experience. All over the country we found that people were actually......stranger friendly!
Are we in Florida? I’m guilty of tuning others out in traffic in our busy area. This was an eye opener for me personally.
I know the paranoia in our country of strangers and the reason why....
Just did not realize how ‘affected’ I was in my usual....Southern hospitality!
So.......friendly, helpful people.......inspire me!
By the way, we did have one unusual......crazy experience!
One man.....the $3.21 per gallon gas station attendant.....actually lied to us.
The questions we asked.....how far to the next gas area, is there any name hotels in the next little town we mentioned, how much was the going rate for the hotel behind him...all of these answers he gave.....were absolutely false as we discovered.....He must have laughed himself silly over adding to our dilemma....“a Cadillac with four tourist who don’t know ‘nothin’! Why they will even pay $3.21 (pump price) for mountain side gas!”
Yep, that was us! Gas got us to San Simeon a few miles away....Dockie’s GPS answers is ‘crow flies miles’ so we were unsure.....There was 6 or more name brand hotels at our stop,(he said none) the hotel he answered $200.00 or more to......was learned to be...half that!” The one point of agreement.....he thought we were crazy....and we learned...’he was!”. In any event we all got a laugh!
......Another such funny encounter was in Navajo country....a couple of panhandlers were at the gas station we stopped at and one of them asked Charlie for ‘some change’. Reluctantly Charlie reaches in his pocket and fishes out about 75cent in loose change asking...”What are you going to use it for?”.....the answer...”haven’t decided yet!” made us all laugh!
Think I will try that one next time I ‘solicit a hand out from Charlie’!
By and large, the awesome, majestic state to state scenery of our trip was......life changing inspiration!
Natural beauty was the major part of our trip. Unchanged nature was found everywhere we went....Evergreen and Redwood Forests, Canyonlands, Sea Stacks from a mountain view, rivers, lakes, creeks all whose final paths led to the great Pacific. A new respect for nature was formed by four Floridians.........Breathtaking to say the least.....the great vistas presented by the Hand of God in nature was truly inspiring to the soul. It seemed that we were in essence holding our breath for the next majestic display around the corner every day of our trip. When Annie P. commented yesterday (after having been released from her one day stay in the hospital)....when she said, “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything!”....she spoke for all of us!
That’s Divine Inspiration!

P.S. See rearranged photos...Whirlwind Trip Albumn! ...Link #1