I have been in Colorado for just over 10 years now and I finally went gambling for the first time up in Canyon City. The decision to go up as made after work at about 1:30 am at the Icehouse with Tamara and Kari.

Fast forward to 6 pm and we all meet for a slice of pizza at Two-fisted Mario's in LoDo. Despite some brief navigational challenges (looking at you Tamara) we managed to make it up the highway to Canyon City.

Not sure what I was expecting, but I have to say that Canyon City was a lot nicer than I expected. It was very clean and not to gaudy. There was even a brewpub. Though these days in Colorado, its hard to find a city that has more than 500 people without a brewery of some kind.

We found parking and hit The Lodge. We started with just a few rounds of roulette while we waited to get drinks and the wandered over to the craps table. After watching for a bit we got up and started rolling. I just want to say that I know how the game of craps works, but have no f*ing clue how the betting works. The pitboss at the table was being very nice and trying to explain it, but I still have no idea if I won or lost money there. Then we took free booth photos.

Deciding to move on we hit Ameristar next. This being my first time here, you have to go here just because it's the tallest and grandest looking casino/hotel/thingy/whatever. I have to say that I was surprised at the distribution of different games. The table pits in all the casinos were relatively small compared to the amount of space slot machines were given. I know there are some very smart people designing these casinos for maximum profitability and that is done very intentionally. That is just not how I like to gamble.

The three of us didn't stay too long and ended up heading to The Canyon Casino . We sat at the first Blackjack table and hit our groove. We sat for about 2 hours and I was proud to say I was down but didn't lose everything. Lots of laughs had. Unfortunately, I saw the dude across from me playing very aggressively and drop at least $400 to the table. Scott, Rocky, and Abbey were are dealers. It was very clear that Abbey was VERY new to dealing cards but that was OK because she knew some people we knew and was generally pretty cool. Once we found out the dealers were staying there because of us we decided to close out. Scott was thankful and threw a $30 food voucher our way for next time.

We headed back to Lodge and Tamara was the first out. I very quickly lost $90 at single deck Blackjack. Time to walk away. I wasn't about to hit an ATM. Kari managed to last about 30 min. During her run I hit 1 slot machine for $1 and won $10. One more time at the free Booth photo machine and the quick picture below and we were on our way back down to Denver.

All in all a very fun night with a couple of co-workers. Thanks for dragging me up there for the 1st time. I look forward to it again sometime!! :D