Goin' Up To Cripple Creek, Gonna Have Some Fun!

Cripple Creek, Colorado - the historic gold mining town that's now a gambler's paradise!

When the "deal of the day" popped up about 3 months ago for C. Crk, I called Joleen and said let's do it!! So we decided to each buy the deal and use it to celebrate Martin's birthday which is in April and Glenn's birthday which is in May. The hardest part was trying to find a weekend that we BOTH could go - it's amazing how busy our lives get!! The perfect weekend was FINALLY booked and this last Saturday found the four of us heading to C. Crk!!

We each purchased the "coupon" for $89.00 - it included a nights stay at their renovated historic hotel, $80.00 worth of food at The Steakhouse (one of my 2 favorite places to order a steak), breakfast at The Home cafe (they have a 49 cents menu) and $30.00 for lunch at Baja Billy's, a Mexican restaurant!! WHAT A DEAL!!

We found the historic hotel and it was unique, to say the least!! It was on the second floor of a historic building with just 8 rooms, all down a LONG hallway!! The rooms were very nice - of course not your typical Holiday Inn!! Even though the bedrooms were quite small with just enough room for an old fashioned double bed, the bathrooms on the other hand were quite large and very modern. We did notice when we checked in that the rooms were really WARM as the day was hot and sunny!!

Then it was off to gamble!! We had a fun time just playing the nickel or quarter slots and having free drinks brought to us - ate some popcorn and 99 cents shrimp cocktail because we were starving and it was still an hour before our dinner reservations!!

The Steakhouse was once again FANTASTIC!!! After our table side made guacamole and our bacon wrapped shrimp appetizers, our entrees arrived! I had ordered that butter fillet steak again which was awesome - even though I kept telling the other 3 how GOOD it was and to order it, nobody took my advice - trust me, after I gave them each a bite of it, they all decided next time they would be ordering it!! Dessert was a huge brownie, smothered with vanilla ice cream, tons of whipped cream and chocolate syrup drizzled over the top!! As if THAT wasn't enough, the waitress brought out a cake for the 2 guys birthdays!!! We wrapped that up along with our leftovers to bring home as we were stuffed - and no, we didn't even reach our $80.00 total apiece..........

After that huge meal, we walked around a little bit but found ourselves back at our rooms by 9:00 - we're quite the party animals, aren't we??

The room was really warm and between that and the squeaking hallway floorboards, I didn't get a great night's sleep, even though we had the window wide open!! Oh well, sleep is overrated anyway...............

We were to meet Martin and Joleen at 8:00 - Glenn had woken up early and went out to take a walk - I woke up and glanced at the clock - 7:22 - wow - why wasn't it really very light outside??? Could it be because C. Crk is in a valley and the sun hadn't made it over the mountain yet??? I jumped up and hit the shower running so I could be ready by 8:00. After I was ready and I put my watch on, I glanced at the time - hmmmmm 7:00 - great - the clock in the bedroom wasn't set to Daylight's Savings Time - could have had another hour of QUALITY sleep!!

Glenn came back about that time so we watched a little TV and then headed out for a walk and soon it was time for breakfast!! We had our coupons for our 49 cents breakfast and I figured it would be toast and an egg and coffee - absolutely not - we had cheese omelets with biscuits and a bowl of fresh fruit!!! On the side, we ordered some bacon and orange juice so between the 4 of us, our bill was a whopping $5.14!!

We headed up the street and found a cute coffee place so ordered some "speciality" coffee and started to plan our trip to Belize next fall!!

By the time coffee hour was over, the museum had opened up so we walked to it and spent an interesting hour and a half looking all kinds of historic items from the gold rush days!

There were little cabins outside made to look like prospector's cabins and all kinds of mining equipment to browse around - it was really fun!! Don't we look cute???

Because Joleen and I still had vouchers to cash in at one of the casinos, we decided to sit and gamble some more (we both kind of felt weird, gambling on a Sunday morning) and of course ordered some drinks from the waitress who we later figured out we knew so visited with her!!

And if all that food and drink wasn't enough, we still had lunch to eat - Baja Billy's was a really cute place all done up in southwest decor - and we had some great Mexican food - again, to go boxes were in order!! Our total at the end of that meal that we owed for was $1.59.

It was time to leave - we were fat and happy and had such a wonderful weekend - but all good things come to an end - I'll be watching my emails for more of those great "deal of the day" coupons!!