Colorado Springs, Colorado June 23 – June 28, 2024
Fort Collins, Colorado June 28 – July 4, 2024
I never tire of mountain views, and the views traveling into Colorado were beautiful.
We visited two major attractions in Colorado Springs. The first attraction was Garden of the Gods. We loaded up our bikes and traveled around the park to see all of the rock formations. The ride is only about 8 miles, then we hiked in a mile here and there to see the formations. The park is very beautiful, but was extremely crowded.
The next attraction we visited was Pikes Peak (actually in Manitou Springs). We took the train ride up to the summit of Pikes Peak. The ride took about one hour each way. The summit is 14,110 feet elevation and pretty chilly on a warm summer day. The views from the summit were spectacular!
We saw some cute marmots while we were at the summit.
After the train ride we toured the town of Manitou Springs. It was a cute little town. We stopped and had lunch and we dropped into the local brewery – Manitou Springs Brewing Company. The beer was awful!
We found better beer in Colorado Springs at Urban Animal Brewery.
Our next stop was Fort Collins, Colorado. We ended up stopping here due to a glitch in our schedule and were lucky to find an RV park with availability this close to July 4th. Overall we liked Fort Collins even though it is not really a tourist destination.
The city has over 200 miles of bike paths. All are perfectly maintained and meander in and out of town and through parks. We really enjoyed biking in Fort Collins.
One day we drove up to Estes Park. Unfortunately, there was so much construction, it was impossible to park and tour the town. We stopped on the edge of town and had lunch at the Estes Park Brewery. The food was pretty good, but the brewery kind of looked like the inside of a VFW (no offence to VFWs).
We also toured downtown Fort Collins. As I indicated, this is not a tourist destination, so the shops were not really targeting tourists, which I loved. We wandered in and out of the shops. It was a good way to spend a day.
Besides bike paths, Fort Collins also has loads of breweries. The breweries we visited in Fort Collins were New Belgium Brewing Company and Odell Brewing Company. Both had live music on most days and had great outdoor seating to listen to the music.
Next up Nebraska.
“The Colorado Springs Song” by Jewel