July 13-19, 2026/ Colorado Springs, CO
July 19, 2026
Our second week in Colorado Springs turned out to be a wonderful mix of history, mountain scenery, nostalgia, and time spent with family.
We began the week with a drive to Cripple Creek, once one of Colorado’s richest gold mining towns. Today the town has reinvented itself as a casino destination, but the town has surprisingly few of the shops and restaurants (outside of the casinos) that you might expect in a historic mining community. Gold is still being mined in the area, although now by large open-pit operations rather than the underground mines that made the town famous.
One of the highlights was the excellent Cripple Creek Visitor Center, perched on a hill just before entering town. Admission is free, but it is obvious that considerable care—and gambling revenue—has gone into creating and maintaining the facility. It does an outstanding job telling the story of the region’s mining history. We also visited the Lawmen and Outlaws Jail Museum. It was interesting enough, although probably not a place I would return to.
