Colorado Destinations
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Touring the Colorado Capitol and the Denver Mint
A couple weeks back, I put together a list of things to do in Denver, and touring the Colorado Capitol and Denver Mint were items #1 and #2 on the list. What was intended to be a one paragraph blurb about each quickly morphed into a total of nearly 700 words… and I still had… Continue reading
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25 things to do in and around Denver, Colorado
The 2024 airport statistics were released recently, and Denver has jumped up the list quite substantially; it’s now the 6th busiest airport in the world and #3 in the United States, with over eighty million passengers last year! Every time I’m there it’s a mess, so I know it’s a busy place. I wouldn’t have… Continue reading
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A long weekend in Glenwood Springs, Colorado
Glenwood Springs is a town we’ve driven through many times, and we always comment on the lovely scenery and the historic buildings and the allure of the steaming hot springs. But getting to Glenwood Springs in the winter means navigating the horrors of snowy roads and weekend ski traffic, and that’s enough to deter us… Continue reading
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A long weekend in Palisade, Colorado
This year, we didn’t have the vacation days to swing a two-week roadtrip, so instead we settled for a much more low key – but still fun – belated anniversary three-day weekend in Palisade, Colorado. Palisade is a small town on Colorado’s Western Slope, best known for its wineries and peach orchards. It’s a town… Continue reading
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A guide to visiting Brainard Lake Recreation Area
(Updated May 2025) Brainard Lake Recreation Area was one of the first places we visited after moving to Colorado and has been a frequent destination of ours ever since. It’s a great place to take out-of-town visitors for some lovely scenery and short, relatively easy hikes. The longer hikes at Brainard are some of my… Continue reading
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A comprehensive guide to visiting Rocky Mountain National Park
(Updated May 2025) Looking back, I realize I always took for granted that I used to live relatively close to a national park. Then I moved to New England, where the nearest “mountains” weren’t really mountains and the nearest national park was a full day’s drive away, and I realized how much I missed it.… Continue reading
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Colorado Destinations: Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge
From 1952 to 1994, Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant was home to manufacturing facilities for both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, including triggers manufactured from the highly radioactive elements uranium and plutonium. After a series of issues (the plant was actually raided by the FBI in 1989 after claims of environmental crimes) followed by permanent ceasing… Continue reading
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Colorado Destinations: Chautauqua Park
The Flatirons are a prominent facade of five slanted rock slabs that rise above the town of Boulder, Colorado and are probably one of the most recognizable features in the entire region. Their outline and/or name appear all over logos and businesses in Boulder and their sharp profile is visible from many miles away on… Continue reading
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Colorado Destinations: Mount Princeton Hot Springs
Until I moved to Colorado, I wasn’t aware of its plethora of hot springs. But if you spend any amount of time in the state – or do a google search of ‘best things to do in Colorado’ – you will quickly discover the popularity of the state’s many hot springs. While there are a… Continue reading
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Playing tourist for a day in Estes Park, Colorado
About a year and a half ago, C and I concocted an idea: spend a day in Estes Park. It’s a town we drive through frequently en route to our hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park. But aside from a quick stop for coffee or beer on the way home, neither of us has actually… Continue reading
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Rafting the Arkansas River through Browns Canyon National Monument
The final day of our Memorial weekend trip was upon us, which meant one thing: whitewater rafting time! We were signed up for a full-day trip on the Arkansas River with Noah’s Ark Rafting. I booked this trip back in January, at which time I debated between Saturday or Sunday and joked that, no matter… Continue reading
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Colorado Destinations: Chalk Creek Canyon, St. Elmo, & Salida
I’m trying something new this year, which is to do a little less research related to our travels. I’m still doing some; I like to know at least vaguely what’s going on and be educated enough to ensure we aren’t going to find ourselves in a situation we’re not prepared for. But I’m learning it’s… Continue reading
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Colorado Destinations: Cottonwood Pass & Buena Vista
Memorial Day weekend in Colorado is a total crapshoot, weather wise. Some years it’s cold and rainy. Some years it’s warm and sunny. Some years it snows. And some years it does all of these things and then some… which, to be honest, is kind of what happened this year. But I digress. Despite the… Continue reading
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History and hiking in the Georgetown-Silver Plume Historic District, Colorado
Like most Colorado mountain towns, Georgetown and Silver Plume were founded by miners. Georgetown was named after prospector George Griffith, who struck gold in the area in 1859. While this triggered a small gold rush, the gold mining operations in the region were only mildly successful due to the relative lack of gold in the… Continue reading
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Colorado National Monument
I was sorting through some old posts on here recently and stumbled across this one from a few years ago about my previous trip to Colorado National Monument. I imagine many of you can relate to the cringey feeling you get when you read something you wrote so many years ago. And, of course, the… Continue reading
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Colorado Bucket List: fall colors at the Maroon Bells
While finally getting to see Independence Pass was lovely, the real reason for our weekend trip was because I had secured us an entrance permit for the Maroon Bells. These two iconic 14ers are the centerpiece of the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness Area near Aspen, Colorado. This was our third trip to the Bells; the first… Continue reading
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Canyon Country – Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado
By far, most people who visit Dinosaur go to the Utah half of the monument. It’s the side with the dinosaur bones for which the monument is most famous. It’s also the more accessible part of the monument, with developed campgrounds and easy river access. However… what the Colorado half lacks in dinosaur fossils, it… Continue reading
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Castle on the plains – Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site
Bent’s Old Fort was in fact not a fort in the traditional sense. It may have resembled military fortifications, but it was actually a trading post. Brothers Charles and William Bent and their business partner Ceran St. Vrain built the fort a few miles outside La Junta in 1833, choosing this particular place because it… Continue reading
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Heartbreaking history on the Colorado plains – Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site
The Eastern Colorado plains are the original homeland of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Osage, Kiowa, Sioux, Jicarilla Apache, and Ute tribes (source). But by the mid-1800s they were being systemically dispossessed from their homelands. The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie established that the Cheyenne and Arapaho would retain some of their native lands in exchange… Continue reading
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A day trip to Pawnee National Grassland
The lands of northeastern Colorado have been inhabited for at least 12,000 years, originally by nomadic hunters. More recently, these lands were the home of the Arapaho and Cheyenne, who were forcibly removed in the 1880s to allow white settlers to establish homesteads and farm the land. As settlers soon learned, though, this shortgrass prairie… Continue reading