Travel | featured news

More than half the Colorado residents who are planning to travel for Thanksgiving, Christmas and other holidays said they are booking earlier this year, according to a new AAA survey.
The survey found that the main reason was the high cost of airline flights, gas and other travel expenditures, according to Skyler McKinley, regional director of public affairs for AAA.

The peak of leaf-peeping season in the northern mountains most likely is a week or two away, but the onset of the great fall foliage transition has begun.

The culmination of Steamboat Resort’s ambitious three-year redevelopment project tops the list of most exciting resort improvements in Colorado this winter with a new base-to-summit gondola that will dramatically increase uphill capacity and a 655-acre terrain expansion.

As Denver’s population has exploded, so have its entertainment options. One might think that growth makes it easier to get into the best restaurants, concerts, and sporting events, given that there are more of them than ever.
One would be wrong.

Public access to Mount Democrat, a fourteener near Fairplay that is part of the popular DeCaLiBron Loop, has been permanently secured following the sale of the trailhead, the trail and the summit to the nonprofit Conservation Fund by landowner John Reiber.

There isn’t as much buzz this year around the Great American Beer Festival, which takes place at the Colorado Convention Center on Sept. 21-23, as usual. The annual event — considered to be the largest commercial beer fest in the United States — has had trouble generating momentum since taking two years off because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Autumn in Estes Park is when everything falls into place. Your rock shoes will stick a little better, the trails are in ideal condition for mountain biking, trail running or hiking, and the trout are biting. It’s peak season for your favorite activities but not for the crowds if you can play hooky – you may have the trail, river or rock to yourself if you can get out midweek. Hike among the quaking, golden aspens and hear bull elk bugle.

September is here, and leaf-peeping season is just a couple of crisp nights away. Although Coloradans are spoiled living so close to this annual spectacle, it’s worth remembering that the golden and red (if you’re lucky) displays of aspen and other trees far surpass any other region of the country. So, it’s worth taking a weekend, a day, or even a few hours checking it out.
Not only that, but Colorado boasts other fall delights, from pumpkin patches and roadside peach stands to seasonal flavors in coffee, beers and restaurant dishes.

If you were around in the ’70s and ’80s, you can now forget what you heard about Rock Springs and Green River, Wyo. They no longer deserve the notoriety of Wild West oil boom “Sin City” towns with more prostitutes than New York’s Lexington Avenue, and more bars than Las Vegas.

You shouldn’t stop taking field trips just because you’re an adult. Throughout Colorado, companies that make goods in the state open their doors to give visitors a peek at the process. You can see how they craft high-performance mountain bikes, learn why snowmelt makes whiskey taste good, and see how money is made.
Here are seven Colorado places – and an entire industry (brewery tours, anyone?) — where you can go behind the scenes and get the inside scoop on the creative process.