I was a guest of Toyota on the Million Dollar Highway. All opinions are my own. Put most simply, I am by no means a daredevil. I shudder at the thought of a roller coaster. Skydiving is not on my bucket list. Despite being a Colorado native, I don’t enjoy skiing. Before you assume I’m simply no fun, I can explain. I was born with a predisposition to worry. While I try to not borrow trouble before trouble borrows me, I can’t help myself. As I gripped the armrest of my Sienna minivan with fervor, I shrieked at my husband behind the wheel, yelling, “Careful!” With no guardrails to keep us, no Continue Reading
The Garden of the Gods Wishes You Were Here
To some, a beer garden is pure heaven. Drinking a cold brew under the shade of trees and good company has a certain ethereal quality. It is no wonder that in August of 1859 M.S. Beach, a surveyor headed from Denver down south, took one look at the otherworldly rock formations on the foothills of the Rocky Mountain’s eastern Front Range and thought this setting was suited not for gods, but for a beer garden. His companion Rufus Cable had other ideas. Such a landscape of rocks that seemed to impossibly perch and charge out of the earth was not good enough for beer but rather the gods. He Continue Reading
A Colorado Ghost Town Survivor: Silver, Spooks and St. Elmo
It always seems to take longer going to a place than coming away from it. Roughly three hours from Denver, we made the turn west in between two mountain peaks. Stuck between a rock and hard place, we continue up a road that turns from pavement to rock to dirt. With each twist and turn, we question whether we have missed the very place we seek. When you set out in search of a ghost town, it isn’t surprising to wonder if it has vanished from the road. After nearly turning around, we finally receive affirmation that the ghost town is still up ahead. St. Elmo sits in Chaffee County, close to Continue Reading
Pikes Peak Wishes You Were Here
When Zebulon Pike first set out to climb what he deemed the “Great Peak” in 1806, he was eventually forced to retreat due to a blizzard. Perhaps to make himself feel better, he speculated that it would never be surmounted. Despite not being the first to climb such great heights, Pike would have the last laugh with the lasting name. I have just passed the tollgate to enter the Pikes Peak Highway, a 19-mile journey to the top of the most visited mountain in North America and the second most visited mountain in the world. Over a half a million people each year make the journey by foot, bike, car Continue Reading
Conquering Castles in Eastern Colorado
The wind howls as though fall is dancing into winter. It is just over 50 degrees as I cover the last stretch of the trail. A covered wagon would sure come in handy right about now. My fellow travelers and I battle the winds and the cold to reach shelter just up ahead. It has been a long journey, one filled with unknowns and danger, but at long last, we have reached neutral ground. I am out in Eastern Colorado, a part of the state few come to see, but back in the 1830s and 1840s, this was the “Castle in the Plains”. Bent’s Old Fort sits just 8 miles east of La Junta, Colorado, off of a Continue Reading
Sitting on the Corner of Colorado History at Ninth Street Historic Park
Almost like a hallway linking classrooms, students make their way ever so casually to class by way of the oldest restored block of residences in the city of Denver. They layout on the grassy thoroughfare to take in the sun in between classes amidst homes that were present long before Colorado was even declared a state. It is an unusual scene, one where the youth of college and university life coexists with the city’s earliest days. Within structures hailing from 1872 to 1906, ordinary collegiate business is conducted from transfer services to honors programs. Not a spot often sought out by Continue Reading
Rocky Mountain National Park Wishes You Were Here
I picnic at Hidden Valley in Rocky Mountain National Park, a scene similar to that on the bottle of the brand’s ranch dressing. Only I have fewer vegetables. A simple sandwich always tastes better outside in fresh mountain air. I hear something just beyond my perch. It’s a brook babbling, almost on cue. The scene is laughably perfect and I guess in many respects what you see on that bottle of ranch dressing. I’m spending a few hours at Rocky Mountain National Park simply because I can. When you live in Colorado all of your life, you sometimes forget people come from all corners of the Continue Reading