Cripple Creek Road Trip, Part I

Well I’ve been on more summer adventures than spending time crafting, so it’s another post about my travels.

Last weekend we did a road trip to Cripple Creek, Colorado. Out of the blue we received an invitation for a free hotel room, $75 dining credit, and $75 free slot play at the new Chamonix Hotel and Casino in Cripple Creek. So we took advantage of a free-ish weekend getaway and an excuse for me to see another part of Colorado I had not yet visited.

Chamonix Hotel & Casino, image from Casino Careers website

Cripple Creek is one of the historic Colorado mining towns that were granted gaming/casino building licenses to try and revive/save the old mining towns. The other mining towns in Colorado granted this special license are Central City and Black Hawk, Colorado where John goes to play poker tournaments. Gambling is only legal in these three towns in Colorado, except for two Native American run casinos in the Four Corners area of Colorado.

The Roadtrip

Driving from our home to Cripple Creek we passed by some beautiful and interesting sights, some of which we had to pull the car over to see better.

Of course I had to sneak in some Black & White photography…

We came across and old abandoned under the mountain passage that we think was once used for gold mining since we were in historic gold mining country:

Cripple Creek

When we arrived in Cripple Creek, Colorado Donkey Derby Days was going on.

According the the Visit Cripple Creek website:

“People from all over the world descend on downtown to be inspired by the town’s resident donkey herd, who roam Cripple Creek in honor of the original Cripple Creek donkeys from the town’s Gold Rush days.“

They had lots of booths/vendors set up as well as donkey exhibits and we had fun wandering about. They also had a beer garden and food court with an United States Air Force cover band playing (they were really good!) playing good blues, rock and country music in their military uniforms.

After wandering the festival for a while and then checking into the hotel, we ate a nice buffet dinner at the casino with an amazing desert bar:

We tried not to be too naughty at the desert bar, agreeing to only one trip each to that magical section of the buffet!

Okay that’s enough for today and tomorrow I will share Part II with our adventures during our first underground gold mine tour 🙂