DENVER · COLORADO
Plains to peaks, all in a day.
Rocky Mountain National Park, Red Rocks, Mount Blue Sky and Pikes Peak. The day trips out of Denver, and the breweries you cross between them.
Only in Colorado
Three things you can’t do anywhere else.
Plenty of US cities have mountains nearby. Denver has these three. The summit drive, the natural amphitheatre, the elk in town — each one is specific to this stretch of Colorado.
The summit
Drive a 14er.
Mount Blue Sky Road climbs to 14,130 ft on the only paved road in North America that gets you above 14,000 feet. The summit parking lot is colder than the city by 30 degrees and the view spans most of the Front Range. You can be home for a beer.
- 1 Guided Hiking Tour in Colorado Rocky Mountains View of Mt BlueSky
- 2 Mount Blue Sky Alpine Summit & Red Rocks Tour from Denver
- 3 Mount Blue Sky 14,265ft Summit and Glacial Lakes
Carved, not built
A natural amphitheatre.
Red Rocks is geology, not architecture. Two 300-foot sandstone monoliths frame the stage; the city sits 15 miles east through the gap. Tilted strata, 70 million years old, set as a perfect bowl. There is no second one of these anywhere.
- 1 Red Rocks & Beyond
- 2 Shared Half-Day Mountain Tour in Red Rocks Evergreen and Echo Lake
- 3 Visit Red Rocks Park, Continental Divide & Breckenridge
Wild, an hour out
Elk in mountain streets.
In Estes Park at the eastern gate of Rocky Mountain National Park, herds of wild elk wander the main road. They are unbothered. The park sits 60 minutes from downtown Denver, the road climbs to 12,183 ft, and the wildlife is the kind of thing usually a flight away.
- 1 Discover Rocky Mountain National Park
- 2 Rocky Mountain National Park in Summer Tour from Denver
- 3 Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes Park Tour from Denver Winter and Spring
The first day out
Start where everyone starts.
If you’ve only got one day west of the city, this is the one most travellers pick first. The day trip Denver is built around.
The classics
Denver’s Most Popular Tours
Rocky Mountain National Park, Red Rocks, Mount Blue Sky, Pikes Peak. The days most travellers take when they come to Denver.
By region
Pick a piece of the Front Range.
Each one is its own day out. Rocky Mountain NP for the elk. Red Rocks for the amphitheatre. Mount Blue Sky for the summit drive. Pikes Peak for the cog railway. The Foothills for everything between. RiNo for the murals.
By drive time
How far do you want to go today?
Denver puts the Rockies on stacked drive-time rings. Red Rocks in 20 minutes. The Front Range foothills in under an hour. Rocky Mountain National Park’s gate at 90. Aspen’s 3.5 if you really commit.
Under 30 minutes
Inside the metro and the first foothills.
30 to 60 minutes
The Front Range and the closer canyons.
1 to 2 hours
The 14ers and the national park gate.
2 to 4 hours
The ski towns and the Continental Divide.
By activity
Or pick how you want to spend the day.
Walk if you want the city. Hike if you want the mountains. Brewery crawl if you want the Denver story. Whitewater raft for the cold-water shock. Ghost walk for the late 1800s. E-bike if you want range without the lungs.
After the sun drops
Denver after dark.
Denver’s late-1800s gold-rush history shows up best at night — cemetery walks past Cheesman Park, lantern tours through Capitol Hill, the haunted Brown Palace. Three ghost walks we’d send our friends to.
America’s beer capital
On the brewery trail.
Denver has more breweries per capita than any major US city — the original Coors plant is up the road, and RiNo alone packs 40-something taprooms inside a single neighbourhood. Three crawls we’d use to learn the city.
South down I-25
Pikes Peak & the red rocks.
An hour south of Denver, Garden of the Gods stacks 300-foot red sandstone fins against the snow-capped 14er behind it. Cog railway up Pikes Peak from Manitou Springs. Three picks we keep coming back to.
Above the treeline
Trails out of town.
When the city ends and the mountains start. Hiking out of the foothills, e-bike along Clear Creek, whitewater on the Arkansas. The three we’d book first when the weather’s right.
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