Last year, we booked a trip to Florida’s Siesta Key along with some friends who had wanted to vacation there. Frontier Airlines had some…troubles…and we ended up re-booking that flight at least twice. The end result was a scrambled schedule (we arrived a day earlier than planned), and a flight credit since the re-booking ended up being cheaper than the original flights.

We spent the difference flying somewhere we had never been before: Denver, Colorado.

What a great trip it was. We managed to cover the spread of the most interesting things to do out there, though:

  • Hiking through the snow-capped mountains at Rocky Mountain National Park
  • Driving to the highest point we could reach on Pike’s Peak (the last few miles of road were closed due to snow and ice)
  • Walking among the stone structures in Garden of the Gods
  • Exploring the gold-rush town of Idaho Springs
  • Venturing around downtown Denver.

The trip was split into two locales. We stayed the first two nights in downtown Denver, and the next three nights up in the hills near Idaho Springs. If I had to go back, I would spend all of my time up in the mountains and simply visit the downtown once during the trip!

You can check out the video highlights below, and some deeper thoughts down below the break.

Additional Thoughts

Spending time in downtown Denver was interesting, although as mentioned above I had my fill on this trip and would relegate future trips to visiting the downtown as a single day-trip. We stayed in the Curtis hotel, which was an easy walk to most places. Parking was pretty expensive there, $40/night at the Curtis, however we found a city parking garage across the street which was supposed to only cost $20. The first night, they didn’t charge us anything. The second night an event was going on, so we only paid $15. Quite the deal!

The brewery scene in Denver was both a surprise, and a disappointment. Many great local breweries crafting various styles. Yet perhaps only a small handful of the beers we tried were truly great. A large majority were simply ok. For all the lore surrounding Denver as a craft beer destination, I find Asheville, NC to beat them hands down. Oh well, at least we found a couple spots we thought were excellent and truly unique, something we can come back and revisit in the future.

Leaving the downtown area, we drove north to Rocky Mountain National Park (in our rented 4Runner!). While researching trails to hike, I saw many recent comments on AllTrails indicating microspikes and poles would be a wise move, so we stopped at a rental place in Estes Village at the foot of the mountain. This turned out to be the best advice we got the entire trip! Hiking on snow-packed and ice-covered trails without these spikes on our shoes would have been, if not impossible, a great pain in the ass. The effort of the hike was extended when my mapping software let me down, turning a supposed 6-mile hike into an 8+ mile adventure (Strava link). Whoops!

We wrapped up the hike a tad later in the day than expected, and drove across the mountains to our Airbnb for the night. This was an adventure because some wildfire smoke had drifted into the area, and we were traveling on dirt roads up a mountain in the darkness. When we drove back down the next morning in search of breakfast, I was (naturally) mildly alarmed at how close some steep drop-offs on the side of the road were. Always nice to drive during daylight hours in places you’re not familiar with!

The next few days we spent hiking around Idaho Springs, and traveling down to Colorado Springs to explore Pike’s Peak and Garden of the Gods. Every hike was excellent, with views for miles. At Garden of the Gods we rented electric bicycles to tour around the main road of the park, stopping to get off and hike very short distances to the rocks and attractions. I may have misunderstood the bike rental place, as they mentioned not taking the bikes on dirt trails while saying nothing of dirt roads. So 6 miles up a dirt road we took ’em! Got some excellent views of the mountains and Pike’s Peak, which can be seen in the video embedded above.

For our final day in Denver (Monday-ish) we drove back downtown and explored the Botanical Gardens, which were HUGE, and the Forney Museum of Transport, which was very, very cool. Lots of classic cars, old trains, and old motorbikes! Either of these attractions is 100% worth it, if you’re ever traveling through Denver.

Our return flight was awful, with a scheduled departure time of 11:59pm. Oh, if only they stuck to that time. The flight was delayed, so we grabbed a bunch of coffee and did our best to keep awake. We finally got in the air around 2am, and were back on the ground in Philadelphia with the sun rising. I’m getting kinda old, and staying awake for this long is just not fun anymore. We hopped the SEPTA train back to West Trenton station, and were home at…some point. We had the day off to sleep and recover.

Great trip, would do again. Although I think we’ll check out some more of the western US first before coming back to Denver. California, Oregon, many cool places to go visit. That’s for another day!