Considering visiting a couple relatives near Denver - what to do?

[UrbScotty]

I'm thinking about going to the Denver area to see some of my extended family in the Denver area in late July or early August.

I've been to Colorado once before, about seven or eight years ago. I went to Wolf Creek Pass, Colorado Springs, Denver, and then I stayed overnight in Nebraska, all in one day.

I think I will stay for a week this time.

Any ideas, tips, suggestions, etc., on what to do, where to eat, etc.?

[LaurenG]

1. There are tons of things to do

Hiking and site seeing. Try Estes Park, Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. Go to Fairplay and visit a pretend South Park, up 285, Evergreen and Conifer try the hot dogs in Aspen Park Downtown 16th street mall. Lots to do. Besides all the shows etc.

[texastoast]

2. Nice little club/coffee shop district near downtown

I was there last winter and had some time to kill so we cruised around downtown. Lots of interesting places to explore.

You could also head over to Boulder. That's a cool place.

Head west of Denver on 70 and you will be at the ski resorts which have cheap condos in the summer. Some of the lifts are open for fun rides up to the high meadows.

Of course, my favorite is to find a high mountain stream and try to invite the trout for dinner.

[rawtribe]

3. Rocky Mountain National Park

If you love the great outdoors I recommend RMNP. Be sure to do Trail Ridge Road to Grand Lake. You could continue on to US 40 going through Winter Park and on to US 70 back to Denver. It's easy to do in one day. Lots of natural beauty and thing to do along the way.

http://www.nps.gov/romo/

http://www.rmnp.com/

[MostlyLurks]

4. Just got back from a Colorado vacation.

Didn't spend much time in Denver, but we did fly into and out of there so we did some "nearby stuff".

For a nice scenic drive, catch route 6 west of town, then find your way to "Oh My God Road", which will take you into the nice little burg of Idaho Springs. From there, just jump on I70 and it's not too far back to Denver. This link:
http://www.trailcentral.com/trails/clear_creek_county/IdahoSprings/oh_my_god_road.shtml
Covers it a little in reverse, but you should get the idea.

If you want a day trip with a nice drive and a hike, try Hanging Lake. Head out 70 W into Glenwood Canyon (it's about 150 miles one way, I think, so it's a long day trip) and follow the signs to the Hanging Lake trail. It's 1.2 miles one way with over 1000 feet of change in elevation, a hard but not impossible hike to a nice lake which rests in a sinkhole on the edge of a cliff. Lots of waterfalls into the lake, very picturesque. Hike takes 2-4 hours depending on your fitness.
http://hikingincolorado.org/hang.html

Mostly.

[janx]

9. While in Idaho Springs, did you partake of the

Healing Waters of the Great Spirit? The hot springs? I like to go there from time to time.

[InternalDialogue]

5. Boulder, Glenwood Springs, Red Rocks

I live in Denver and probably don't take advantage of the things around here as much as I should.

Boulder's always fun for me. Get up there in the morning, take a walk in Chautauqua Park, just on the south side of the city. Great view of Boulder, walk right up to the Flatirons, the iconic red rocks jutting out of the foothills. Get lunch on the Pearl St. mall and (especially on weekends) enjoy the buskers and musicians outside. If you're there during a taping of E-Town, buy tickets and get to the Boulder Theater for that show.

For something a little more sedentary, get tickets for Glenwood Springs on the California Zephyr, the Amtrak train that leaves Denver about 8:00 each morning going west. The tracks rise above Boulder and pass through the Continental Divide in the Moffat Tunnel, a 6.5-mile bore that exits at Winter Park. The tracks rise up toward Kremmling along the Fraser River, then drop back down along the Colorado River into Glenwood Springs. Great scenery, smooth ride, great chance to talk to fellow travelers. In Glenwood Springs, you can get a room at the Hotel Denver, whose entrance is about 50 yards from the train depot. And across the river is the Glenwood Hot Springs, a huge complex of pools and caves fed by the hot water. Take the train back the next day, get into Denver again in the evening. (I recently took the Zephyr from Denver to Green River, Utah. It cost $40 each way.)

Check the schedule of concerts at Red Rocks Amphitheater in Morrison, just west of Denver in the foothills. July/August is prime time for shows there, everything from rock to jazz to folk. Gates for parking usually open two hours before the show, but if you get reserved seats, like I usually do, there's no rush to claim a spot in the amphitheater, so I like to meet friends early at the Morrison Inn, a Mexican restaurant with a rooftop deck on Morrison Road, which goes all the way down into Denver -- easy to find. Then take your time getting to the concert, enjoy the walk in, and really appreciate the acoustics and environment of a fantastic facility. Even if you're sitting up higher, you reap the rewards of the view of the plains and city to the east. If you're lucky, you'll get a prairie lightning storm to watch. Amazing.

[MissMarple]

6. Visit the mountains, maybe a mountain town.

Aspen and Vail are a bit cliche, Durango, Ouray, Creed, Crested Butte, Leadville are a bit more old Colorado. They are harder to get to, though. Well, longer, not really harder. :-) Pikes Peak may be worth the trip, and Rocky Mountain National Park. This is a quite diverse state. The San Luis Valley has sand dunes and is quite arid. It was settled by the Spanish, actually after the U.S. acquired Colorado. We made the area safe for settlers from New Mexico who had been trying to move in from Taos and Sante Fe. The Navajo and Kiowa were quite predatory, probably more so than the Utes.

Also, the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs is quite beautiful. And The Fort is a restaurant and an interesting place to visit. It's just west of Denver. It was featured on the Food channel. It is a reproduction of Bent's Fort that was originally west of Pueblo. That has been reconstructed, but I doubt you want to go that far. And it doesn't have a good restaurant nearby. :-)

[RobertDevereaux]

7. If you hike, be sure to...

...wait a day, so your body can adjust to being at this altitude.

You don't say where you're traveling from so that may not be a problem, but if it's from sea level, you shouldn't try hiking the mountains until you've been at least 24 hours in Denver.

[ThumperDumper]

8. I'm in Denver

We have one of the coolest aquariums in the country. (And I've been to a lot.)
Ocean Journey. It's inside one of the most expensive buildings ever built in Denver.

Restaurants...
La Central is a medium-priced French restaurant on Broadway downtown. They're famous for their muscles. They have a special for a giant bucket of muscles (cooked a bunch of ways) and all the fries you can eat. Or they have some nice scallop dishes. Good appetisers... Good pasta dishes...

Denver's best-kept secret is a health-food Mexican restaurant on Virginia, 3 doors east of Colorado Blvd. It's called Alexander's. One side of the menu is regular mexican (actually New Mexican) food - the other is all health/vegetarian mexican. It's probably the best place to eat in Denver if you have any picky eaters in your family. [phone]

Also call Comedy Works (also downtown - sorry don't have # handy) and see what they've got going on. Ask them about free tickets. They often give away free tickets to the Amateur nights to get people in the door and all you have to do is buy some drinks and food. It's fun. I do it all the time.

If you like to drink and get silly, there's a REALLY fun place in LODO right next to Coor's Field called SingSing. It's a piano bar with two dueling pianos where the waitresses dance on the pianos like Coyote Ugly (except not so low-brow). It's crowded until about 11pm but then it gets nice and you can get a table and get snookered and join the sing-alongs with your friends until they close.

The Wynkoop (sp?) Brewery is owned by our beloved Mayor John Higgenlooper and is surprisingly uncrowded - you can hear yourself think and can probably even get a pool table or a foosball table pretty easily.

The Pavillions at the 16th Street Mall is a good place to hang-out and catch a movie. Park underground off Welton. When you see a movie you can validate your parking for 4 hours. This usually means you can park for free and see a movie, catch dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe which is right there and poke around in a few stores like the Virgin Megastore and some places that sell hip retro T-shirts.

Have fun!
.

[janx]

10. If it's hot and you feel like taking a swim,

there's a rustic (no country club) pool at Eldorado Springs, at the mouth of a beautiful canyon.