Chipotle, Chipotle, Chipotle! A pilgrimage to the original Chipotle in Denver.

By Lisa | Aug 31, 2012
Posted in: Best Of, Colorado, Food |

According to Wikipedia (today’s definer of choice!) a pilgrimage is… …a journey or search of moral or spiritual significance. Typically, it is a journey to a shrine or other location of importance to a person’s beliefs and faith…many religions attach spiritual importance to particular places: the place of birth or death of founders or saints, or to the place of their “calling” or spiritual awakening, or of their connection…with the [...]

Yummy, yummy Coors. I mean MillerCoors. Perfect for my Milwaukee roots.

Colorado Mountain Towns

By Paul | Aug 31, 2012
Posted in: Books, Colorado, Drives, Food |

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I was really looking forward to returning to Colorado and exploring a few more mountain towns. Here’s where we stopped and what we liked: View Larger Map Grand Junction Grand Junction, even though it’s right next to Colorado National Monument, doesn’t feel like a Colorado town to me. It’s too big and sprawling, too dried out and desert-y. Colorado National Monument feels like Utah. North of the town, there’s a [...]

Independence Pass, Colorado

By Paul | Aug 30, 2012
Posted in: Colorado, Drives |

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As if Aspen couldn’t get any better, we drove out of town over one of the coolest passes of the trip — Independence Pass. Why is it awesome? Well, the US Pro Cycling Challenge just biked over it (full route). The road from Aspen narrows and widens oddly and inconsistently all the way up the slope. There’s an old ghost town near the top. It’s too difficult to maintain in winter, [...]

Aspen Has Great Pizza

By Paul | Aug 30, 2012
Posted in: Colorado, Food |

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We didn’t think we’d like Aspen. We were expecting affluent assholes, pretentious pricks, and spoiled schoolkids. We were expecting Telluride. Telluride feels like it’s uncomfortable with its rich-town status. It asserts that its mine is still open, that it’s a working-class town. Which is bullshit, of course, the houses in town start at $2MM. Telluride is rich but self-conscious. It’s annoying and grating. Aspen is somehow the opposite. Aspen is [...]

Maybe Paul's tendency to stand on the edge of canyons helped contribute to my nightmare.

Falling into canyons at Black Canyon National Park

By Lisa | Aug 29, 2012
Posted in: Best Of, Colorado, Hikes, Parks |

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I keep having this recurring nightmare: Paul and I are standing on the edge of a canyon. One after the other, we fall in. Paul falls in, then I fall in. I fall in, then Paul falls in. Over and over. Sometimes we fall in because the wind blew a little too strongly or because the rock gave way under our feet or because we couldn’t keep our footing on [...]

What a town. Note the mountain proximity. [LAM]

No Bike Locks in Crested Butte, Colorado

By Paul | Aug 29, 2012
Posted in: Bars, Booze, Beer, Etc., Colorado |

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Crested Butte isn’t the most accessible town. If you want to arrive via dirt road, you have some options (in the summer). If you want to stick to pavement, you’ve only got one choice — Highway 135, up the valley from the south. Maybe it’s the accessibility that does it, the controlled access, but I don’t think so. This is a friendly town, but it can’t be that friendly, can it? It [...]

Hello to an old friend at Colorado National Monument

By Lisa | Aug 28, 2012
Posted in: Colorado, Parks |

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I’d made my peace with saying goodbye to the desert at Dinosaur National Monument. Then we made a last minute swing through Colorado National Monument and my composure was shaken; my closure was ruined. You know how it is: you’re moving out of town and leaving behind a good group of friends — that last night, you have a big party, have a great time, a bunch of fond farewells, [...]

Now Entering Colorado!

By Paul | Aug 27, 2012
Posted in: Colorado, Utah |

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Man, I was so excited to be back in Colorado. Even the billboards were excited for us to arrive — “Real beer is worth the drive,” they proclaimed. Soon we’d be able to buy Fat Tire beer, Lisa’s favorite. Our first stop: Dinosaur, Colorado. We checked it out on Google Maps. There’s Brontosaurus Boulevard, Stegosaurus Way, Triceratops Terrace. How cute, right? Well … Dinosaur, Colorado is a bit of a shithole, [...]

Dinosaur National Monument gives us the perfect desert goodbye

By Lisa | Aug 27, 2012
Posted in: Best Of, Colorado, Hikes, Parks, Utah |

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Yes, Dinosaur National Monument has dinosaur bones. The best bones have long been removed and placed in museums, but they’ve left a few in place to illustrate the amazing forces that made these bones find-able in the first place: first, lots of animals and dinosaurs died in a river bed. Sad. The smaller animals and dinosaurs were washed away by the river but the bigger ones settled down and were buried by [...]

Returning to Mesa Verde 20ish Years Later

By Paul | May 29, 2012
Posted in: Colorado, Parks |

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I’m unsure now of the chronology of it, but somewhere between Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, and the Four Corners, we visited Mesa Verde on one of the road trips of my childhood. I also remember stopping to visit a friend of my parents in Newport Beach, California. They had their own copy machine, which made me think they lived in terrific wealth, but they lived in a duplex, which made me wonder [...]