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Colorado family vacation planning – overview of travel options in the highest state
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The view from the Amphitheater Campground, overlooking Ouray, Colorado is hard to beat.
Planning a family vacation in Colorado is a bit like picking out one confection from a full display case at a really deluxe pastry shop. The options all look so beautiful, and how do you know which one you’ll like the best?
Here’s an overview of Colorado’s travel offerings, to help you decide what part of the highest state would be most tasty for your family.
Bird’s Eye View
While most people think of the mountains when they think of Colorado, the state actually has three distinct personalities: the eastern high prairies, the central mountain corridor, and the western desert canyon country.
Eastern Prairies
On the eastern side of the state, wild, sweeping, prairies roll for miles across the high plains. When you whip across this area on the freeway, it seems monotonous. However, when you slow down, and explore the national grasslands (run by the National Forest Service), the state parks, and national historic sites on Colorado’s eastern prairies, you’ll discover how much the landscape has to offer. If you hike or horseback ride across a stretch of grassland, you can breath in the wild scenic beauty with the wind. You’ll spot abundant wildlife (think pronghorn, box turtles(!) and eagles), and get the chance to explore history from the earliest prehistoric mammoth hunters to famous pioneer trails. The prairies hide strings of appealing small towns (one of my favorites is La Junta) while offering traveling families the most affordable of Colorado vacations.
Rocky Mountains
Colorado is known for its mountain corridor. Stretching down the middle third of the state, the Colorado Rocky Mountains are really several mountain ranges, separated by large valleys and parks. The ranges have great names, like “Never Summer”, “Rabbit Ears”, and “Needle Mountains”. The Continental Divide winds its way from north to south through Colorado’s mountains, dividing America’s waters. Along its path, peaks soar into the sky, many reaching over 14,000 feet above the level of the sea. All that soaring and then dipping back down into valleys makes for some pretty spectacular scenery – one of the most popular reasons for traveling in Colorado.
Western canyon country
As beautiful and untamed as the wild horses that run there, Colorado’s western canyon country enchants visitors with its scenery and its mystery. While most families are drawn to the mountains, the few that venture into this red-rock desert find rivers to run, history full of outlaws and rugged explorers, ancient cultures and their whispering cliff structures, and some of the most outstanding hiking in the country.
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