Colorado’s summer heat beats down on wilting trees, and the flowers are in full bloom. What better way to spend an easy afternoon than sitting under a shady tree or umbrella and sipping a cool beverage and munching tasty snacks. Old town Longmont is host to several patios ideal for letting the day go. Here are five restaurants that will keep you cool. Lucile’s Creole Cafe 518 Kimbark St.…
On a typical late Saturday night, the Denver Diner’s pink and green sign casts a neon glow over West Colfax Avenue and Speer Boulevard in Denver. The large window wrapping around the northwest corner of the diner reveals a full house. Almost every purple stool, booth and table is full, and the empty ones are being bused to clear a place for the next customers waiting at the door.…
“I need to go to Lone Tree,” I tell my friend Larry, who also happens to be the ideal dining companion. He’ll eat anything once, which pleases me to no end. At the mention of Lone Tree, however, he unleashes that predictable scant of skepticism inherent to urbanites living in citified high-rise apartments. I am undeterred. “I hear there’s a terrific new pizza place in Lone Tree. We’re going.”…
Bob LeMassena told me his age with a smile and a gleam in his eye, as if letting me in on a long-kept secret. “I’m still young,” he said. Bob is 93. And then he quoted the first line of a Samuel Ullman poem: “Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind,” adding, “I live by that one.” Bob is a volunteer at the…
The tiny community of Tabernash might not be among your first choices of Colorado vacation spots because the list of tourist amenities it does not have far outweighs the attractions it does, other than the Colorado-class views, of course. For instance, among the things the town lacks is a motel, a definite impediment for the destination tourist. The Tabernash Lodge, the one nightly rental business that the unincorporated town…
When it comes to lakes, Colorado may not have the largest or the most, but the state can comfortably boast of having some of the loveliest high-altitude bodies of water in America. Some can be explored by car, while others require effort before their charms are revealed. With hundreds to choose from, the toughest part may be deciding where to begin. Here are three ways to enjoy Colorado’s lakes.…
Calming waves of hot mineral water envelop the body. Relaxed eyes gaze at mountains and forest. Nothing but sky hangs overhead. Simmering in an outdoor pool of earth-heated water may be the hottest way to enjoy Colorado’s wet side. The state offers at least 47 natural hot springs ranging from therapeutic resorts to wilderness soaking holes. Some feature mega-size pools, while others require tub-squeezing friendliness. A few are geared…
I had been lucky. On five previous rafting trips through Brown’s Canyon on the Arkansas River, most other members of the group took tumbles into the frigid waters. But, throughout the years, I’d always been able to maintain position on the topside of the raft. I didn’t have that same sense of calm this year, the sixth annual trip on this particular 16-mile excursion guided by River Runners. The…
Everyone knows there are no oysters in the Rocky Mountains. The oysters we’re talking about, for better or worse, aren’t seafood at all — they’re the family jewels from that herd grazing next to Interstate 76, and they’re a tradition of sorts in Colorado, a novelty food hanging around from the days of vast cattle drives like a bad hangover that won’t go away. Most Colorado natives are familiar…
A big black dog, a tent and a fishing pole are the sine qua non of Colorado living and, over the years, I’ve had a number of all three. Fishing, I enjoy, and scratching the ears of a big goofy mutt is a great relaxing sedative, but it stops right there because I’ve always hated camping. I like being outdoors, but when night falls, to me there’s something unsettling…