Hi friends! If you’ve been keeping up with my recent travels, you’ve seen that Dillon and I went to Montana recently. But there has been a change of plans to our road trip draft. Thankfully, our original plan had wiggle room and we were pretty flexible due to the fact that we work remotely. So long story short, while we originally planned to visit all the outer/coastal states (from Florida to Cali to North Dakota to New York and so on), we decided that a better route for us would be to drive south after Montana and head to Colorado. Which brings me to this post, where I’ll be sharing a quick snippet of our trip and ideas for those planning on visiting Colorado.
Also I must mention…we absolutely plan on visiting the northeast at a future time. But we planned to be back home in September and going the northeast route would take potentially much longer. Not to mention, the time we were in Colorado is when the kids were back to school and it wasn’t ski season either, which means there was a big supply of accommodations.
We were undecided about the decision at first, especially since we’ve been to Colorado and Wyoming last year in the summer. I also have a blog post about that trip last year if you want to see the fun things to do there. But ultimately, we decided to stay in a different area and do more of a living experience.
1st Airbnb
The reason I wrote “1st Airbnb” on top is because we decided to stay an additional week in Colorado following the first Airbnb stay. So basically we booked two Airbnbs for about one week each.
Dillon booked the first Airbnb in the town of Keystone right near Dillon. Funny enough, there is actually a town called Dillon in Colorado. It’s not too far from the popular town of Breckenridge. Dillon was pretty impressed that there was a town with his name and with the exact spelling.
Like I mentioned earlier, we did more of a living experience so we didn’t book an activity each day, but regardless, it was relaxing and enjoyable. This place had a cozy fireplace and was decorated like something you would see in a mountain town (which it was).
We were around 8,000+ in elevation. I do want to mention that we’ve been driving by quite a few mountains already and it didn’t feel extreme to stay at that elevation. But if you are flying from somewhere that’s low elevation (say, Florida), to a town that’s high elevation, take the first few days to adjust and avoid any hard workouts. Know the signs for altitude sickness because it does happen.
Some of our activities included making a few trips to the grocery store to get wood for the fireplace, food for the week, and wine. I should make a post about Airbnb grocery shopping list because I’ve learned a thing or two by now! We’ve gotten pretty good at the meal planning and calculating how much food we’ll need for that week (overbuying refrigerated food is not a good idea when you have to check out of an Airbnb). We did run out of wood for the fire, and although it doesn’t get super cold in Colorado during August, it was cozy and nice to start a fire.
One activity I did love was walking around the Dillon Reservoir. This town is known for the reservoir and let me tell you, it is beautiful! It had some sailboats on one end, the mountains in the backdrop, and wildflowers growing all around. There is also a place to park not too far from the Dillon Marina where you can go on the trail walk. It’s a beautiful place and especially nice for an evening walk.
Another activity Dillon and I did was eat dinner at Red Mountain Grill and then end the night watching the Top Gun: Maverick film at a theater near us. Dinner was nice! I absolutely love my date nights with Dillon! I highly recommend weekly date nights with your spouse:) The restaurant was semi-casual with sports being played on multiple TVS. They served American food with southwestern flares. They even had some Asian food options. I got the sesame seared tuna with seaweed salad. So yummy!
The movie was so good too! I actually watched the first one with Dillon last year and I like the second Top Gun more than the first! It has a lot of action for those of you who like action movies.
2nd Airbnb
For the second Airbnb, Dillon booked a place in the city of Dillon again haha. We both enjoyed that town because it wasn’t overly packed and it’s simply a pretty town. On check out/check in days we try to go to the gym so we did that right before checking in to this second place.
Dillon and I celebrated our 6 months of being married during this week! It’s not an anniversary but I feel like it’s still special to celebrate in the first year of marriage. We did dinner and drinks the following day to celebrate. We went to Vue Rooftop in Dillon, which is still a relatively new place since the time of writing this blog post. As I mentioned many times, we love our rooftops! We enjoy dining with a view. The backdrop this time was the beautiful mountains.
Our last activities included going to Lake Dillon again, followed by the gym and Mount Evans the next day. Mount Evans is huge! Its summit is 14,000+ feet. It has the highest paved road in North America! (just watch out though because it’s super bumpy up there). We saw some mountain goats on the way up. It was a fun experience!
Overall, we stayed at this Airbnb for 8 nights. It also had a fireplace just like the first place. I soaked up the cozy vibes while drinking hot chocolate and watching Gilmore Girls. I am definitely ready for Fall…
If I were to go to Colorado again, here is what I would do next time:
- Go ice skating at the Stephen C. West Arena (we planned to go but it didn’t work out this time)
- Visit the Dushanbe Tea Room in Boulder (I love my tea!)
- Do a hike in Colorado Rocky Mountain National Park for some exercise
- Do the train ride to Pikes Peak
- Rent a boat to go on Lake Dillon
- See the ice castles in the town of Dillon from December-March
- Take a day trip to Breckenridge and visit The Spa At Breckenridge
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