Colorado and what to do therein (especially in August)

Have a friend to visit in Denver and another in Durango. We're thinking about renting a car and doing stuff in between. Advise.

Royal Gorge.

alpine meadows might be in bloom, no? picnic your brains out.

oops

You could go hang out with some vampires.

go to one of the ski resorts where you can rent a mountain bike, use the ski lift, and bike down.
visit the most perfect mountain I've come across: Ouray. It's a bit frightening how tidy and picturesque it is.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison rarely gets mentioned, but it's a spectacular natural site.

rent a atv/quad/4wheeler. I recommend this place in Salida: http://www.allseasonrentals.com/

bump

ha, the advantage of going down past Royal Gorge (Canon City) is that the Mexican food gets notably better as you pass Colorado Springs. also if you could bring me back some Sonic that would be terrific

Mesa Verde's close to Durango, and I'm sure that as a committed train hobbyist you won't miss the narrow-gauge railroad out there

also the Great Sand Dunes might lie on certain southerly paths, if you're going down along the front range and then cutting in a Canon-City direction around to Durango

Tell me more.

Also if you think it's highly worth visiting anything in a neighboring state that's not an insane drive away I'm open for suggestions.

Keeping in mind of course that I'd prefer to stay away from the hottest places.

more please

its much slower but the proper approach to durango runs though ouray and silverton. do the railroad if u can.

black canyon of the gunnison is cool, you can also get that in by the northern approach.

slow is fine. we were thinking about weekend in denver, 5-day slow winding approach to durango, day or two in durango, quicker way back.

you could go down the northern route to hit black canyon/million $ highway/railway/durango. side trip to mesa verde. then go back out over wolf creek pass and try to work in the sand dunes. covering a lot of ground there

So I think we're looking at:

Fly into denver in evening, stay with friends...

Day 1: Leadville with friends (stay at friends' friends in Leaville)
Day 2: Leadville/drive to Aspen area/stay in Aspen area
Day 3: Some kind of excursion or other from Aspen / nighttime Aspen music festival (free violin concerto competition)
Day 4: Drive out to Moab, UT, possibly camp
Day 5: Moab morning/ drive into Durango to stay with another friend
Day 6: Durango/Mesa Verde/stay in Durango at friends
Day 7: drive to gunnison, camp
Day 8: Morning in gunnison, head back to Denver, stay at friend in Denver again
Day 9: Denver

Highly recommended:

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park -- not crowded at all, nice campsites, canyon is heartstopping, amazing sky at night. The whole area around the Gunnison river east of the park on 50 looked incredible but we only saw the rest from a car

Hiking around Aspen -- Maroon Bells are beautiful but crowded; we also did an awesome, somewhat steep hike up a mountain to a high-altitude lake (I think it was called American Lake Trail)

Leadville -- America's highest or second highest town. Interesting history as a former mining boomtown that went bust and now is coming back as a kind of extreme sports destination (Lance Armstrong and other pro bikers have started to take up the LTI 100, a somewhat insane 100 mile mountain bike race at high altitude).

Driving almost anywhere. Million dollar highway was beautiful but so was the route from Aspen to Ouray. Amazing landscape changes.

Not so great: Aspen itself, Silverton (drecky tourist town), downtown Durango (a fine place really but nothing special).

Fun fact: My great-grandfather was a miner in Leadville from 1879 till 1881.

Not so great: Aspen itself

this is where we're headed tomorrow. actually, we'll be at the top of snowmass village, which is adjacent and/or connected to aspen. so i hope it's better than "not so great."

uhhhh . . . this place is awesome and beautiful (granted, we're just settling in).

ha, yeah, aspen is goooorgeous. kinda a weird ski scene maybe, but the scenery is ridiculous.

technically we're in snowmass village (top-of-the-village, specifically). it's stunning. snow on the ground, but it really isn't that cold (yet).

yeah it's been super nice in the rocky mtn area for the past few days. 60s in january out here is not the usual, but i'll take it. think it's supposed to be a high of 0 in a couple days.

oh so it's going to get bad. i like it cold tho. we're in a ski-in/ski-out place. maybe i'll try skiing (my wife's a skier; my daughter wants to learn).

welcome to co. snowmass is a really nice resort area. usually the weather in aspen and denver is pretty disconnected, but this time, no. its gonna be cold as fuck for the next 3 days both places. i got my new bike out on the singletrack at green mtn today before the snow and cold though.

its a dry cold, you'll hardly notice. (friday in denver was 67 deg!)

welcome to CO!
enjoy the fresh pow pow or whatever the hell its called

are the x games still going? that would be a bit of a circus i should think. dont get hit by any somersaulting snowmobiles.

skiing is for suckers. drinking cocktails in ski lodges is much better imo.

thank you both! we saw a little of the x-games today, then i had the best warm cinnamon-spiced whiskey ever, and we signed up our daughter for her first ski lesson tomorrow. she is excited.

i must say that -- south-floridian that i am -- the air/altitude here is hard to adjust to. i've been getting winded from routine stuff, like climbing stairs or walking inclines. hoping it gets better over the course of the week. love it here, btw.

daniel---i lived in aspen/snowmass for two years, lemme know if you have any questions

thanks! our friends, who moved here from miami a year ago, are showing us around, but i think i'll have some questions after we start being on our own a bit more tomorrow.

I've lived in Denver for the past 11 or so years, any questions....... JUST AKS.

Erm, not going for racial insensitivity... just a typo, swear.

no worries, and thank you both. i might take you up on it.

i didnt know you lived here, kelpolaris

sent you una mensaje in reply, homo the second. also for dan - glenwood springs is a cool town of note. i lived there for about a year. actually, it's boring admittedly but it has (i think?) the world's largest hot springs pool. you can swim laps in it and stuff. passes, i think, are about $13-20bucks but allow you to enter and re-enter the pool at as you wish.

there's also a lot of hot-pots me and friends used to frolick in out by the river, tho you have to ask around for the location of those and you'll find that they're *always* occupied. usually by hippie types w/ names of "resin" and "smegma" (true story)

i only mention it b/c it's the closest target/sports authority/walmart/general chain store location in the whole valley, about 40 or so miles from aspen.

steady, softly-falling snow.

i'll check out glenwood springs, kel. i've also heard good things about (a) the "ghost town" nearby snowmass and (b) carbondale, which apparently is an artsy-ish community featuring a killer restaurant (six89, iirc) and the area's only record-shop.

There are lots of ghost towns up around those parts, but you usually have to hike a bit to get to them, so the snow would make getting to them this time of year a hassle.

there are dog-sleding rides to the ghost town! (also conventional shuttles).

Hotel Colorado in Glenwood supposedly is haunted. Tours are free I think? and you can stay in the actual room in which *the crime was committed* (some sort of The Shining-esque murder from what I remember) or whatever it was. Involves little girls looking at your whilst you sleep. Stuff like that.

Carbondale's boring imo, old girlfriend was from there. I really dig a town called Basalt - no real *attractions* but it the 2 times I've been there I found it kinda really oddly surreal. It's one of the most picturesque no-bullshit towns I've ever been to, unhampered by yuppies (yet) or any presence of a Starbucks. Me and buddies often just smoked and walked around town for hours - like I said, there isn't anything particular to do; it's just one of those rare towns that doesn't cater to tourists.

yeah basalt is sort of a bedroom community for aspen's service class

our friends live in basalt; we're going there for dinner tomorrow. about a month ago, the house behind theirs burnt down. the police/fire dep't have concluded it was arson, but no arrests yet. intrigue!

our daughter is now on her first ski lesson. i'm nervous for her. fear we didn't give her a second pair of gloves, the pair she has isn't warm enough, roll up her wool face-mask, and so on. i'm totally, hopelessly overprotective, so this is going to be weighing on my head 'till we see her at 3PM.

-18F; "Feels Like" -30F.

so cold.

crazy cold. of course my office in denver yesterday had a (false) fire alarm, so we had to evacuate the building. clear skies, sun shining. -6 out.

when the sun is out and the wind is calm, its no biggie- i shovelled the walks at -4 and was not even chilled. but without sun, brrrrrrrrrrrr.

oh shit, fire drill, that's ridiculous.

well, this sucks.

flights cancelled across the board. now stuck in snowmass until tomorrow, when we're being driven to eagle airport, hoping that the direct flight to miami that we rebooked won't be cancelled. not hopeful; vail tomorrow expects snow, with a high of 18F.

auraria campus was open for business but the majority of my profs cancelled class despite (in spite)

layered up tho, that 3-day chill was really really rather pleasant. i had on about 3-4 shirts + sweater + jacket and w/ that much on i really felt walking outdoors refreshing, almost - um - minty.

shit, its _dumping_ down here. out of a storm that was not really forecast, we have about 7 inches so far.

hope you get home safely and soon daniel esq. miami sounds perfect about now

no mo' snow pls

hunt3r where are you again?

southern edge of littleton

hope you get home safely and soon daniel esq. miami sounds perfect about now

thanks. just arrived. united's first plan was to (a) attempt to reserve space for us on the booked sunday 10:30AM flight from denver and (b) hope that spaces might become available on the booked-solid saturday night flight from aspen to denver. that terrible plan fell through when the (b) flight was cancelled. instead of trying to drive to denver -- which would have required us to start driving at, like, 4:30AM today, we had united book us on a direct flight on american from eagle airport to MIA. that flight went perfectly, and we're home.

whew.

you escaped colorado's clutches this time, esq.!

lol. it was a close call!

i had to do a "no-snow" dance on the runway before the plane took off.

Is there anything at all to do in Durango? I'll be there for a couple days later this month.

durango area is gorgeous! go over the pass to silverton, imo. maybe take the narrow gauge railway if you don't have a vehicle

I figured the area would be gorgeous, just not sure how much time I'll actually have to sightsee since this is pretty much an in-and-out trip for work.

you could drink beer - www.skabrewing.com
terrible name, but great beer.

Oh there will be time for drinking a beer or two, I'm sure.

i've actually never been to durango (tho i live in CO), but everyone i know raves about it, especially in the summertime.

i've only been there on a hit and run style visit myself, which involved a jaunt over to silverton (which i'm a little obsessed with...the ski area there is the best in the country probs), so i can't say much about specifics. just that it's very nice.

Thanks! Its a good start.

hey my wife and i started a blog about our town! check it out! http://longmont100.blogspot.com/