My granddaughter and I went up to Cripple Creek this past weekend to watch their Christmas parade.

What's so special about Cripple Creek? It has a population of just over a thousand and it's something like 14 miles to the nearest grocery store. It sits at 9490 feet above sea level and it is hilly, so yes, you huff & puff a little as you are walking around.

But the air is clean, the sky is so much closer, there are donkeys roaming the streets as a thow-back to yesteryear (when they pulled the carts through the mines), and--that's the draw--it takes me back to a simpler time.

Although it wasn't all that simple. Around 1900 Cripple Creek was the second largest city in Colorado, after Denver. It had 20,000 people crammed into tents, boarding houses, shanties; there were saloons & bordellos and blasting going on every fifteen minutes round the clock because there was GOLD. And there wasn't even a road at that time. People had to go south to Florence and take a stage coach up the back of Pike's Peak to get there.

There is still a working gold mine but those wild days are gone. The parade was short and sweet, which is how I like them. I got my fix of history and my granddaughter got a ton of candy thrown by the people in the parade, and then we went down the mountain to home.