Colorado Travel Guide: Part 1!

Hello everyone!! It’s good to be back! As some of you may know I took the past few Sunday’s off from uploading blog posts because of our family vacation to Colorado! I wanted to take some time to relax, focus on family time, and just give my mind a break from work.

Now I’m back and will be posting our Colorado travel guide in two parts! There are just so many photos that I thought it would be better to divide it up, so that the post isn’t extremely long!

This vacation was honestly one of my favorites and I already wish we could go back. It was AMAZING! The mountains were gorgeous, the weather was perfect and everywhere you looked the views got better and better. And having an entire week to explore CO as a family was awesome!

We left our house Saturday, August 17th at 5:45am and began the 14 hour and 15 minute drive to Longmont, Co!

It was definitely a long car ride, but it was fun being all together with the fam. Coming from Wisconsin we had to drive the length of Iowa and Nebraska, which was the worst part. Both states felt so long, but as soon as we got into Colorado the views started to get better! As we drove farther into the state, you could tell we were at a higher elevation because all of our ears were popping.

By 8:30pm (Colorado time), 9:30pm (back in Wisconsin) we finally arrived at the Home2Suites in Longmont, CO. It felt soooo good to get out of the car and check into our room!

We carried our suitcases and bags inside, put on our pajamas, and went to bed almost instantly! We were all so exhausted from traveling the entire day.

Now I am going to lay out the rest of our trip by what we did each day!

Day 1 – Boulder, CO

To get adjusted to the higher elevation, we decided to have a more relaxing and low-key kind of day.

We drove to Boulder, which was about 20 minutes away from our hotel, and walked around the University of Colorado Boulder’s campus. The campus was absolutely beautiful. I really loved the architecture of all the buildings and in the distance you could see the Rocky Mountains!

We spent the majority of the morning walking the campus and taking photos of the beautiful scenery! The campus was huge and there was so much greenery to look at. I could definitely picture myself sitting in the grass or by the river reading a book every day here!

The second half of our day was spent in Downtown Boulder, which was within walking distance of the University. A few people had recommended that we check out Pearl Street, a four-block pedestrian mall with different restaurants and shops, so after lunch at Cosmos Pizza, we made our way there!

There was a really pretty river walk along the way and there were a few people tubing down it! We spent some time walking along it and then checked out the Boulder Public Library that overlooked this river.

Once we made it to Pearl Street, the temperature was near 100 degrees and we were sooo hot! I enjoyed stopping in the different shops along the street so I could be in air conditioning haha.

The entire street was so cute and there were street performers that we watched do a few tricks. A lot of shops were selling souvenirs and t-shirts too, so we stopped in to look around!

To finish off our day we drove to Chautauqua Park (10 minutes drive from the University) to do some hiking. By this point me and my mom’s legs were so tired from walking all day, so we didn’t make it as far as the rest of the family, but it was still sooo pretty!! For us, we could definitely feel the difference in elevation being in the mountains. It felt like I couldn’t get as much air in and I was way more out of breath than usual!

The views were insane here! We spent the rest of the afternoon/night hiking and exploring the Chautauqua Park area before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Day 2 – Electric Bikes in Longmont

We rented electric bikes from Small Planet E Bikes in Longmont, which was only a quick 5 minute drive from our hotel. We had the bikes for four hours and started out on the St. Vrain Greenway Trail.

This was our first time riding electric bikes and they were SO MUCH FUN! It was so nice because if you didn’t want to pedal you really didn’t have to. On my bike you were able to pull this little lever thing back that would make you go faster. So any time we were going uphill I would do that!

Here are the photos I was able to take while we were biking! I don’t have too many photos of us on the bikes, because we were riding them and I had a hard time taking photos while riding!

Sadly, one of our bikes stopped working halfway through the day, so we all had to take turns riding that one, so that one person didn’t have to pedal the entire way. Other than that, it was a ton of fun!

Day 3 – Estes Park

Estes Park was probably my favorite place we went to this entire trip! We actually had to drive through the mountains to get to the town, and then once you’re there it’s known as being the base of Rocky Mountain National Park.

Our original plan was to spend the day hiking in the Rockies, but we ended up stopping at the Estes Park Visitor Center first and exploring the area! There was so much to see and do in Estes Park alone, that we actually never made it up farther into the Rockies!

This is how we felt most of the vacation! We had plans to do or see certain things, but the cities we went to were just so pretty that we ended up spending more time at everything. Honestly, we could have extended our vacation by another week. There was THAT much to see and do!

Right across the street from the Estes Park Visitor Center was a river walk that took you around part of the city. We walked along it, took tons of photos, stopped in a few shops, and just enjoyed the scenery.

For lunch we stopped at Bob and Tony’s Pizza and it was delicious! Highly recommend, if you’re in Estes Park area and want some pizza!

From there, we walked to the Estes Park Aerial Tramway. It was a small tram that fit about 8 adults and took you right to the top of the mountain. It was only a 3 and a half minute tram ride, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it! I was too scared! I already don’t like tight spaces, so I let the rest of my family go and I just waited at the bottom. There was a river and some picnic tables nearby, so I walked around until they came back down!

After the Aerial Tram, we got ice cream from a local shop, walked the streets of Estes Park and then finished off our day by visiting The Stanley Hotel, which was just up the road from the Visitor’s Center. Stephen King actually stayed overnight here in 1973 and was inspired to write the book, The Shining. The Stanley Hotel was the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel which is shown in the movie!

The hotel was so pretty and huge. We walked around the outside grounds first before we went inside. There was a hedge maze like the maze in The Shining in the front of the hotel, there were different buildings around the main hotel that we looked at, and tons of incredible views!