DAY 23: A Coonskin Cap, A Cave & Suction Cup Steve Day....

DAY 23:  Manitou Springs, CO - July 24, 2010

Correction to DAY 22 Blog:  When speaking of Nubbins, the one-footed cat, obviously I meant Nubbins was "missing" one foot instead of "having" only one foot......Politely, none of you pointed out the error of my ways, but just wanted to clear that up first thing......Nubbins had 3 paws and is quite okay with it....

Now, I realize I'm in to DAY 24 when writing about DAY 23, but I could barely keep my eyes open last night and the Blog would have been weirder than normal had I tried to write it last night..........

Anyway, on to Friday.......Not to make all you women jealous out there (ohhhh okay, I am too trying to make you jealous!!), but my husband started our wonderful day out with homemade waffles, whip cream and strawberries.......out on the picnic table!  What a great way to start off the day......While attempting to put some weight on tiny little Kris with the waffles, we discussed what we wanted to do today.

We decided to head to Cripple Creek which is a neat little casino town in the middle of NOWHERE.  Kris and Steve both enjoy gambling (Chuck and I just flat suck at it) so off we went.  As we were winding our way up through the mountains, I could hear grumbling in the backseat; something about "Liz taking the curves to fast" or something like that.  I don't know what they're talking about.......

While Steve worked the penny slot machines, Kris, Chuck and I promptly went through our designated $20 and then headed on down the street to shop a bit.  I found the coolest coonskin cap that I had to have and we attempted to again put some weight on Kris by forcing a chocolate malt down her......

After Steve finally ran out of pennies, we headed on back to Manitou Springs and on to Garden of the Gods......or as we prefer to call it, Garden of the DOGS........this is some place Murphy can visit too!

So, we popped that little tike up on every BIG rock we could find......people from all over the world were taking his picture.....and he was posing like a professional.

One particularly high cave-like area that Murphy wanted his picture taken in nearly caused us to lose both him and Steve.  Steve carefully placed Murphy in the cave WAAAAAAY up in the rock........Steve balanced vicariously until we all got our pictures, and then as he went to take him out of the cave, Murphy was having a little anxiety over the "getting down" process and slipped right out of his harness (most likely due to his Australian haircut!!).  

Remember....Steve is "balancing" like a rock climber; which he's NOT; and Murphy is headed into the cave......Now, add Liz.  I climb up to Steve, who has one hand on Murphy's leg, we coax Murphy out of the cave (same people from around the world taking pictures, mind you!) and safely get him and I to the ground.  Now, we still have Steve attached to the side of this huge rock........


We finally successfully removed Steve's suction cupped hands and feet from the side of the rock mountain and headed on out......

Here's some interesting things we saw today........