General: Colorado

After a two week holiday in Colorado, I don't know where to start writing about it so I thought I'd take a stab at another holiday A-Z to give you just a small taster of our experience. I hope you enjoy it!

===A is for Aspen===
Renowned as a rather 'up-itself' ski-resort frequented by the rich and famous and those who wannabe rich and famous, we were a little reticent to go to Aspen but curiosity got the better of us. We'd also ...
...and proved that wrong by getting the cutest little cabin at a place called L'Auberge d'Aspen for just £36 for the night. Against all odds, we really liked the place because all the skiers had gone home and the summer season wasn't due to start for a few more weeks. On the down-side it piddled down half the time we were there, on the upside it was still ridiculously pretty. All the fancy expensive spas and designer shops where the WAGs of the rich ... more

After a two week holiday in Colorado, I don't know where to start writing about it so I thought I'd take a stab at another holiday A-Z to give you just a small taster of our experience. I hope you enjoy it!

A is for Aspen

Renowned as a rather 'up-itself' ski-resort frequented by the rich and famous and those who wannabe rich and famous, we were a little reticent to go to Aspen but curiosity got the better of us. We'd also been told that we couldn't afford to stay there - and proved that wrong by getting the cutest little cabin at a place called L'Auberge d'Aspen for just £36 for the night. Against all odds, we really liked the place because all the skiers had gone home and the summer season wasn't due to start for a few more weeks. On the down-side it piddled down half the time we were there, on the upside it was still ridiculously pretty. All the fancy expensive spas and designer shops where the WAGs of the rich and famous pass the time whilst the HABs are on the slopes were closed - not that there was never any danger that we'd be tempted.

B is for Boulder

I knew two things about Boulder before I went; they have a big university and it's where the programme Mork and Mindy was shot. We took a little pilgrimage and tracked down the house used in that series although I have to admit I wouldn't have recognised it after all these years. Boulder gives you the impression that the thin air has gone to the heads of the local shops and business owners and you'll never see a town with more 'dream catchers' hanging up. One store was selling wands at $170+ - eat your heart out Harry Potter. This is a very trendy place but in a wholesome and hearty way rather that's really rather appealing. Students can be found out cycling or running up mountains instead of sitting on their couches watching Oprah - it can hardly be called natural, can it?

C is for Car Rental

I was nervous about driving in the USA, probably because the only place I'd done it before was New Jersey where the drivers are horribly aggressive. Somewhere in the back of my mind was the mental image of a red neck in a big pick-up who might invoke whichever amendment it is that lets them carry guns and shoot me for driving in the wrong lane or committing a misdemeanour through not understanding the rules (see F is for Four Way Stop Signs, below). However, thankfully Coloradans are a pretty laid back bunch and, aside from one hooting horn and a couple of very 'British' experiences of the 'After you, - no, after you - no after you' type, we did fine
We rented our car from Alamo on the recommendation of a friend who'd used them many times. It couldn't be a more different experience from renting in the UK. You find the bus stop at the airport and a bus turns up with a smiley driver who leaps off to take your luggage and ask you 'How are you doin'? as if he's interested. You then get to the office, show your license, fill in some forms, get bamboozled into a very cheap up-grade and then wander off and 'Pick a car, any car' from the row that you've paid for. As easy as that.

D is for Denver International Airport

This is surely one of the coolest airports in the universe with it's white fabric peaks that can be seen (only just) from the top of the state Capitol building about 25 miles away. I was told the peaks represent the peaks of the Rocky Mountains but I'm sure I also read somewhere they were Native American teepees. Either way, it's a very pretty airport. I also love the budget airline that flies from DIA which is called Frontier. They have really nice pictures of animals on their tail fins.

E is for Eating Out

It really is cheaper to eat out than to stay home and cook although I have no idea how the economics on that one add up. We saw no evidence that the friend we stayed with had ever used anything in his kitchen other than the over - and that only to warm up pizza for his breakfast. More often than not he left for work with the pizza still in the oven. Fortunately he lives very close to the Volunteer Fire Department.

F is for Four Way Stop Signs

The rest of the world doesn't understand why we Brits LOVE roundabouts but after experiencing Four Way Stop Signs, I'm still baffled about why they don't rip the whole lot out and pepper the nation with mini-roundabouts. A 4WSS is a cross-roads intersection where all four roads have stop signs and apparently there is a system for deciding priority but we still haven't worked out what it was. The UK would grind to a standstill in 12 hours if we had these.

G is for 'Golly Gee'

In preparation for our holiday, Hubby insisted on repeatedly using the phrase 'Golly Gee' thinking that might make him sound like a native, although we told him that nobody outside a 1940s film had ever been heard to say that. It was true - nobody did. Equally nobody spat tobacco, wore cowboy boots or an over-sized hat. I think hubby must have based his entire impression of the USA on old episodes of Dallas and Dynasty.

H is for Hairpins and Highways

Driving in the Rocky Mountains is not for the faint hearted but luckily in May the roads are almost empty and there weren't too many people to witness any mistakes we made. There are two big roads in Colorado - the I-70 goes East-West and the I-25 goes North-South. It really is that easy. To make up for that apparent simplicity, in the process of going where they go, the smaller roads tend to do it in a very zig-zaggy way which is slightly scary when the weather is fine but terrifying when it snows.

I is for 'Injuns'

Or as we have to say these days, Native Americans. Colorado is a really interesting state for native American history, especially in the form of some fabulous National Parks such as the Mesa Verde National Park near Cortez in the SW of the state. This park has the remains of 4500 archeological sites including 600 so-called 'cliff dwellings' created by a group now referred to as 'Ancestral Pueblans'.

J is for Jeeping

What is it with the way that some Americans are just so good at abusing the English language (my apologies in advance to our American members - obviously the 'some' doesn't apply to you - honest)? Jeeping is what the tiny town of Ouray is famous for but it does beg the questions why isn't walking called 'footing'? We don't go 'horsing' or 'aeroplaning' do we? So how does off-road driving or four-wheel driving turn into Jeeping? I bet the lawyers at Chrysler are as busy as the lawyers at Jacuzzi used to be trying to reinforce the protection of their brand. Actually, that reminds me - you'll never see 'Jacuzzi' on a US hotel details - it will always be 'Hot Tub'. Sorry about that - rant over.

K is for Kris

Kris is the friend we went to stay with - a big bear of a man who is rightly proud of the fantastic state he comes from, is a bit of an expert on national parks and can identify a bird from a distance greater than I can actually SEE the bird. We were extremely lucky to have such a great host and hopefully he'll soon recover from my husband keeping him up late most nights talking about the elections.

L is for Lakes

Colorado has some spectacular lakes in its many parks but don't forget that they are mostly made up of melted snow so don't be tempted to go swimming in Spring.

M is for Margaritas

Yes, it could have been mountains or monuments but somehow it's important to recognise the joy of a half pint jug of Mexico's finest export, selling for not much more than the same quantity of beer. I don't normally 'do' cocktails other than for 'special' occasions but it seemed like it would be rude not to when enough margarita to make you giggly can be had for about $5-6. And if you fancy something a bit different than the regular margarita, you can get versions like pomegranate margarita - but I wouldn't recommend that one.

N is for National Parks

Colorado has heaps and we visited a whole bunch - the Pawnee Grasslands (free - for good reasons, see P below), Rocky Mountain National Park ($10 per car), Colorado National Monument (I think that was $7 per car), Mesa Verde ($10 per car) and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (I think that one might have been $15, but don't quote me). In each of the paying parks, the ticket is valid for a week so you can go in and out as often as you like - which would make for great value if you weren't running all over the state like idiots. Aside from the obvious lure of the natural beauty of the parks, we were really impressed by the loos - all of them water-free, non-flush jobbies that you would expect to pong but by some bizarre quirk of design, they don't. I wish they could teach the secret of how to do this to the countries that I normally visit for holidays.

O is for Ouray

Hip Hip Ouray - probably our favourite of all the places we visited, Ouray is a tiny old mining town on the road from Montrose to Dourango. It's got about 8 streets branching off Main St and is surrounded by spectacular mountains and some really pretty waterfalls.

P is for Pawnee Buttes

I'll get shot if the friend we stayed with ever reads this, but the least exciting of our days out was to a place called Pawnee Buttes in the Pawnee Grasslands. It was a very long drive into the middle of nowhere to see a couple of big rocks. Had I read the guidebook that warned about rattlesnakes BEFORE we went, I would have locked myself in the bathroom and refused to come out.

Q is for Quit going on about the Elections - PLEASE

You'd think that nothing else was happening anywhere else in the universe other than the presidential elections. Sadly, hubby got hooked on it but I'd just love to see the American people get exposed to as much coverage of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election as we still get of the Hillary vs. Obama battle.

R is for Retail Therapy

The dollar is so weak that to go to the USA and not spend money would seem rude and ungracious. Shopping isn't a passtime - it's a government sanctioned way of 'doing good', as witnessed by the recent decision to grant tax payers an 'Economic Regeneration Payment' - otherwise known as 'Here's a cheque, go spend it'. If your economy is in trouble, just spend your way out of it. I'm sure there's a lesson in there but I can't imagine it working with Gordon Brown.

S is for Stegosaurus

Just in case you ever need to know, the state dinosaur of Colorado is the Stegosaurus. A fourth-grade class led a state-wide campaign for two years to get Stegosaurus added to the official list of Colorado state symbols leading to an executive order issued by the governor on April 28, 1982 making this official. No doubt these days they'd be campaigning for a state computer game.

T is for Telluride

As a geochemist by education if not by practice, my assumption was that the town was named after the element Tellurium and thankfully, wikipedia tells me I assumed correctly. The locals however claim it's named for what the railroad workers used to say when people wanted to go there - "To Hell You Ride". Let's say it's a bit cut-off from the real world and - these days at least - reality as well.
Telluride is so cool that it just seems to be trying a tad too hard. This is where the real hard-core skiers go - one of the few places that those without the sense to realise how dumb it is, will pay a squillion bucks to go heli-skiing. It's a lot further from the big cities than Vail and Aspen and places like that so you have to REALLY want to go to Telluride - the local airport looks like a Lear Jet storage depot. We went with the intention of taking the gondola up the mountainside for a nice little wander around but despite the reassurances of our guidebook, the gondola was closed for the 'between-seasons' break. Instead we drank over-priced coffee and watched uber-cool snowboarding-instructers hobble around on their crutches in their over-priced branded outdoor gear. This is one place to which I wouldn't rush back .

U is for Ute

I'm sure in my student days watching The Sullivans on daytime TV, a Ute was an Australian term for a pick-up truck but in Colorado, the Utes were one of the key native tribes especially down in the South West corner of the state. There's a Ute Mountain that's supposed to look like a sleeping red Indian chief with his arms crossed - I go the face but couldn't find the rest of the body. The local tribes do guided tours around the area but we passed on that.

V is for value for money hotels

If you want a bargain, go in the first half of May - we paid between £25 and £35 a night for all the hotels we used except in Cortez (for the Mesa Verde National Park) where May is the peak season; So we cashed in a bunch of my Holiday Inn points for a night in Cortez. Despite the cheapness, every place was spotlessly clean without a cockroach in site. One had some interesting tiling in the bathroom but for £25, you can close your eyes. Not one of these places were half as bad as an average £100- a night London hotel and some of them were actually really nice. What's more, in half the places we could have got cheaper.

W is for Weather

Colorado has plenty of weather. We ranged from below freezing to 75 F, although that felt hotter because the air's so thin. Snow in May is not unusual - as we learned - and a couple of days after we left, cyclones and tornados put in an appearance in places that we'd visited. If you are wondering what to wear, pack for all possibilities and that should just about cover it.

X is for an eXceptional art gallery

OK, I'm scraping the barrel a bit with that one but the Denver Art Museum is one of the best I've seen anywhere in the world and bearing in mind that it's not a National museum, just a city museum, I was bowled over by the quality. With everything from contemporary art (including Anthony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Damian Hurst) through great Pop Art (plenty of Warhols for example) through to 19th century and Impressionist art, there's something there to please most people. Then add in a fabulous collection of decorative arts from around the world and I really wished we'd allowed ourselves a lot longer to see everything. I loved their Asian art collection, would have been wowed by their pre-Columbian stuff if I'd known anything about it, and there's some fabulous native American stuff that's worthy of a museum all to itself. It's well laid out with loads of interactive stuff for families (fortunately for us, not too many little darlings around but the ones that were seemed to be having a ball). We are spoiled in the UK with free museum entry but at $13 a head, this was still great value.

Y is for Why not go back again soon?

Ouch - sorry. I'm hoping I've not got hubby too excited but I think he already wants to go back. I need to put together a fantastic itinerary for our next holiday to India or he'll be deserting me and going to the States on his own.

Z is for zzzzzzzz

How we felt when we got home. And how we slept every night after exhausting ourselves running around looking at everything. We did well with our flights and got BA direct flights the are around nine and a half hours each way. If you have to go via somewhere else, it'll be a lot more exhausting but luckily for us, we got return tickets for £497 each - as cheap or cheaper than the indirect flights. 

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