There is a curve between one pine-covered slope and another, a narrow space angled toward the late September sun in such a way as to give a few aspen just enough opening to experiment with a palette of pigments and turn alternating canary yellow and burnt orange, where the path rises gently so that the chins of your slightly older children are visible over the foreheads of your slightly younger children, and the dog looks away from the sun momentarily and over your shoulder at a red sandstone cliff beckoning at golden hour, and you snap the photo and are immediately content that the image on your holiday card will be as sublime as the word on the return address: Colorado.
This could be Golden Gate Canyon. This could be Staunton State Park. This could be Lake San Cristobal. This could be Rocky Mountain National Park. This could be near a bridge over the Fraser River. We could tell you for certain, but we won’t, because we don’t want to be crowded out next year by other proud and well-traveled Coloradans adding our revered spot to their life list.
Colorado is full of places where all you want from life is to walk toward the sun, and then whistle up at the stars, and then toast the sunrise with coffee. So many places like this that we feel sorry for anyone not in Colorado, but not sorry enough to offer them coordinates.
Consider this brief appreciation of a small sampling of our magnificent open spaces as staying just among us. If you know, you know. Blessings to all those who spent the past 150 years setting these glories aside for the public good. And for the next 150 years, let’s honor their work by finding even more Colorado places to build trails instead of roads.
Michael Booth | Reporter
Rocky Mountain National Park
Rocky Mountain is one of the country’s busiest national parks, and for good reason. The self-proclaimed “land of extremes” has everything you could want in a national park — ample wildlife, towering peaks and alpine lakes, and all of it less than a two-hour drive from Denver International Airport. But our recommendation isn’t to join the summer hordes, it’s to visit the park during its offseason: in the dead of winter, when the wetlands freeze over and volunteer cross-country ski guides will show you paths far less traveled.
Mesa Verde National Park
While the vistas from the mesa tops full of sage and saltbrush are quintessential desert viewing, it’s the structures one layer lower that set this national park apart. Tucked into sandstone alcoves are a variety of Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings, from one-room granaries to 150-room villages, that connect the visitor to the deep history of the Four Corners region. The parking lots at Mesa Verde can fill up fast in the summer — our tip is to bring a bike and park at the top of park, then pedal down along the paved roads.
Chimney Rock National Monument
Archaeologists believe the Ancestral Puebloans built more than 200 homes and ceremonial buildings above the valley floor of Chaco Canyon, where Chimney Rock National Monument is now perched. While many mysteries linger about the people who once called this southern Colorado area home, scientists believe these higher structures were most likely to be near the two rock pinnacles, known as Chimney Rock and Companion Rock. Some of the structures have been excavated and stabilized for viewing, and several tours, including night sky programs, are offered to learn more about the hundreds of prehistoric sites that dot the landscape.
Dinosaur National Monument
It might seem bold to name a national monument after dinosaurs in general, but this place in far northwestern Colorado lives up to it. If it’s dinosaurs you’re after, head straight to the Quarry Exhibit Hall at the west end of the park, where more than 1,500 bones are viewable in astonishing detail from some Late Jurassic superstars, like the allosaurus and stegosaurus. (Yes, the monument saw a bump in visitorship the year “Jurassic Park” came out.) Beyond the bones are isolated and rugged canyons carved by the Green and Yampa rivers.
Staunton State Park
Located just 40 miles southwest of downtown Denver, Staunton is perfect for a quick mountain getaway without the hassle of Interstate 70. The park is kid and pet friendly, and great in any season, with its towering granite cliffs and rock formations — including the spectacular Lions Head and Chimney Rock — shady trails and gorgeous meadows. The wildflowers are lovely in the summer, of course, but a quiet walk in the woods on a winter day has its own appeal — just don’t forget your hiking poles for some of the steeper icy stretches.
Fishers Peak State Park
As one of Colorado’s newest state parks, there’s still a lot to discover about Fishers Peak. For decades the namesake summit loomed over the town of Trinidad, but provided little more than a prominent backdrop until the state acquired it in 2019. Now, the park offers 16 miles of hiking and biking trails as well as backcountry big game hunting, and positions Trinidad as a perfect base camp for those who want to explore a lesser-known southern Colorado gem.
Top of the Pines
This former Girl Scout camp fell into disrepair after the scouts ditched it in the 1990s and the city of Ridgway stepped in to prevent its development. The site was turned over to Ouray County and then became Top of the Pines, a restored 175-acre plot now open to the public and complete with recreational amenities like disc golf and a ropes course, as well as certified dark-sky campsites, right at the base of the San Juans. The site is also a 30-minute drive to Ouray and its surrounding hot springs.
Garden of the Gods
Garden of the Gods is easily one of the most iconic features of Colorado’s Front Range (and that’s saying a lot, given it’s mere miles from the base of Pikes Peak). This Colorado Springs city park has spectacular geology and miles of trails for every skill level, with a variety of ways to explore them, including Segways, horseback and driving (as well as hiking and biking). The park even has its own dinosaur, the Theiophytalia kerri, discovered in 1878 but not identified until 2008. The park owns the only known fossil of the special beast.
Wheeler Geologic Area
Colorado’s first national monument and, at one time, the second most popular attraction after Pikes Peak, had its monument status stripped in 1950 thanks in part to low visitation to the area in the La Garita Wilderness near Creede. Part of the reason is its rugged approaches. Depending on where you launch, the hike to its unusual hoodoo formations — made of the ash from an ancient volcanic eruption, and sculpted by over 25 million years of erosion — can range 7 to 14 miles one-way. But the payoff is in the quiet trails, dark nights and a geologic spectacle that rivals the state’s fourteeners.
Pawnee National Grasslands
The grasslands are the antithesis of Colorado’s more iconic natural attraction: the Rocky Mountains (though you can see them from the grasslands on a clear day). Where the Rockies are full of sharp ridgelines stabbing the sky, the Pawnee grasslands along the northeastern plains roll on seemingly forever, in faded yellows, browns and greens that lay close to the earth. The exception here is the Pawnee Buttes, two prominent geologic features that rise 300 feet above the prairie. And while you’ll find big crowds at some of Colorado’s more popular parks, the Pawnee Grassland’s dirt roads provide miles of solitude, and dispersed camping for those who don’t mind windy nights.