My family took a trip to Colorado in 2023. We spent a week there and made a few stops. I didn’t do any of the planning for this trip, I just tagged along.

The big stops were:

• Colorado Springs
• Rocky Mountain National Park
• Denver

We all met up at the Denver airport then started on the trip. My brother did not go with us, he was in Italy with his girlfriend at the time (soon to be fiance and now wife, he proposed on that trip).

I didn’t take all that many photos on my phone while on the trip, most of the photos I took were on my film camera. Those photos are located here: Colorado 2023 Film Photos.

Colorado Springs

The first stop after getting to Colorado was making the drive down to Colorado Springs. There are a few cool stops in Colorado Springs. The Cheyenne Mountain zoo, Garden of Gods, and Pikes Peak are all nearby. The United States Air Force Academy is also on the way between Colorado Springs and Denver.

We decided to stop at Garden of the Gods and Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The weather wouldn’t have been great if we went up to Pikes Peak so we definitely made the right choice.

The Garden of the Gods is a public park that is roughly 1300 acres with really cool orangish rock formations. It was designated as a National Landmark in 1971. There are traces of human visiting the site back to around 1300 BC. I would highly recommend stopping here. You can see it in about an hour or two, the scenery is very impressive.

The next stop was at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. The zoo was very impressive and had some great exhibits (although I will say I still prefer the San Diego Zoo). We got to feed giraffes, see the wolves be fed, and the bears were pretty active.

After Colorado Springs, we drove out to Rocky Mountain National Park.

Rocky Mountain National Park

We stayed in the town of Estes Park outside of RMNP. We rented a little Airbnb that was very conveniently located. We went into the park both of the days we were there. I don’t remember the names of the hikes we did. We parked at a lot then rode a bus to get to one of them, it was a nice little loop that had some pretty good views. We drove through a lot of the park. We stopped at the Alpine visitor center that had some historical information and a view point. A lot of the roads seemed sketchy to drive on. Very narrow without guardrail on the side and large slopes below.

The town of Estes Park was nice and quaint. Very expensive though as tourist towns tend to be. We got caught in an afternoon rain storm one of the days we were there.

The last stop we made was in Denver.

Denver

We spent a few nights in Denver. We saw two Giants vs Rockies games while we were there.

One of the days we drove out of the city and went to see the Red Rocks Amphitheater. I would love to see a concert there it seems epic. I could see it being a bit annoying to get into with inclement weather due to having to walk a bit through stairs to get there.

We also drove through the town of Golden. Golden seemed like a nice little mountain town. There is a Coors distillery there as well.

This trip to Colorado was pretty quick. Still had a great time though, got to see a lot of cool sights. I wasn’t great about taking photos on this trip so there isn’t a whole lot more else to add. Definitely will improve on that in the future.