Warburton Family Reunion - June 2021 - Cripple Creek, Colorado (Part 1)

This summer (in June) we had our second Warburton Family Reunion with my parents and siblings! We met somewhat in the middle at a really cute cabin in Cripple Creek, Colorado. (9 hours away for us and Chris, and 15 hours away from Texas for my parents, Carson, and Emily. Jared and his wife Emily flew in from Chicago.) 

We really had a lot of fun! 

The girls did AMAZING on the drive. I was blown away at how well they did. Neither of them slept at all, but they also didn't cry or whine hardly at all either! (Lucy cried off an on for about 25 minutes when she kept falling asleep only to be woken up by big bumps in the road. Thanks a lot Colorado. But besides that she was happy the rest of the time!) We stopped at a playground every 2 hours to let the girls play and to use the bathroom, and that seemed to be the magical trick that kept them happy for so long. It made the trip more enjoyable for us too. (I'm that parent that loves finding new playgrounds now I guess.) 

My family is not very "go go go" so we relaxed the first night and most of the second day to recuperate from all the traveling. But we did go to Bronco Billy's Casino the second night after the girls went to bed (my mom and Carson stayed behind) and the rest of us each took $20 and had a competition to see who could win the most money at the slot machines in one hour. I was the lucky champion and won $80! My sister Emily won $60 and everyone else lost everything. Which was kind of a bummer but we won as much as we lost. (But Emily and I kept our winnings to ourselves. 😂) 

Day 3 We went to Downtown Cripple Creek to find the famous local Donkey gang. Cripple Creek is a super old and tiny town. It is mostly made up of Casinos and Bars, but there were a few shops that we could go in. It's also a mining town, and back in the old days there were donkeys down in the mines, but one of the Presidents (Roosevelt maybe?) freed the donkeys and there is a herd of donkeys (some whose ancestors were freed from the mines) that wanders around downtown year round. My mom, Emily, Emily, and Rose and I went looking for the donkeys and drove up and down each street twice hoping to find them. When we decided to give up and head home we saw one donkey way off in the distance in someones yard and were SO excited to have found them! We brought carrots and apples to share with them and realized we didn't have nearly enough when almost 20 donkeys came out of no where and surround us. The donkeys were probably the highlight of Rose's trip. She is still talking about how we fed them apples and carrots and how they didn't like the apples as much as the carrots and its been 2 1/2 months since our trip!

On Day 4, we drove about an hour to visit Garden of the Gods. We picked the HOTTEST time of the hottest day of our week in Colorado to go. (not on purpose) so it was pretty toasty. It's still a very cool place though! It doesn't look like the kind of area that would have red rock and then bam! There is this random spot in the middle of nowhere with these huge red rock mountains and trails! It's beautiful! But we didn't last crazy long because Carson's not much of a hiker and Ryan was carrying both of the girls. At one point he was carrying Rose on his back, Lucy on his front, and pushing Carson (a very large 18 year old) in his wheelchair. (Several dads stopped to tell him to stop making all the other dad's look bad! 😂 And for the record, I tried to carry one of the girls and my brothers and dad offered to push Carson. Ryan is just stubborn.) 

"No Pictures! I'm shutting the door!" - Rose