After my brother’s move to Colorado, Kyle and I were itching to find a long weekend to visit. At last we had an excuse to move Colorado up on our travel list!
Straight from the airport, our lyft driver was thoroughly impressed that our first stop was a brewery. We simply thought it was a great way to kickoff the weekend! There are numerous breweries around Denver and Fort Collins. If you’re a beer connoisseur, I’m sure this is already on your must visit list. We visited a few breweries throughout the the weekend, but also got to experience some of the other gems Colorado has to offer.
On our second day we went to Boulder and started the morning disc golfing. This is a great (and cheap) way to get in some walking, fresh air, and scenery. Then we went downtown to Pearl St. It has a lovely shopping district, which is nice even if you’re like us and don’t really like shopping. They also have lots of great pubs and eateries. We had a beer and ate lunch at West Flanders. After that, it was time to head in to Denver to take in a Rockies baseball game at Coors Field. We bought cheap seats on the upper deck with a gorgeous view of the mountains and sunset. I was kinda surprised and definitely disappointed that security made me check my selfie stick at the gate. I feel like I missed out on some great photo ops. Anyway, the Rockies won and I got my selfie stick back so all is righted again.
Day three we visited Rocky Mountain National Park and spent the day hiking. First, we drove to an overlook at the highest pass in the park and hiked around some cool boulders. The views (and altitude) literally took your breath away! Next we drove down and hiked around Spraug Lake. This lake was less popular than Bear Lake, but I thought it was more scenic and much more peaceful. On our hike back to the car we saw five moose in the lake! They were just standing out in the water drinking but it was hard to take your eyes off them. They were huge and very majestic. After all that hiking we had worked up an appetite so we stopped at Smokin’ Dave’s BBQ in Estes Park. It was a long wait but totally worth it!
Monday was solar eclipse day! We found online that the Denver Science Museum was giving out free viewing glasses so we decided to head over there. Since we went to see the eclipse, we spent most of our time outside looking at the sun through the glasses and various telescopes. But it looked like a really neat museum to revisit sometime.
When we go back to Colorado again we’ll be sure to traverse more of Rocky Mountain National Park, hike the horsetooth reservoir, and try more breweries.
