Here are a few spots you should hit if you make it out there, but be warned: the town is pronounced “Bew-Na VIS-ta,” and if you say “Buena” as in “Bueno” the townspeople will all laugh at you and then call you a gringo.

14ers

If Buena Vista has anything, it’s freaking awesome access to 14ers in the area. Whether you’ve got a few 14ers under your belt or you’re just trying to get started, Buena Vista is a great place to get after it. We really can’t stress how great mountain access is in this town. In 50 minutes or less, you could drive to the trailheads of 10 different 14ers. We shit you not, dude, Mount Princeton is 15 minutes away, Mount Antero is 30 minutes away, and La Plata Peak is 45 minutes away, just to name a few. 

Eddyline Brewery

Eddyline Brewery will always have a special place in our heart. One time when we were 17, we went on a backpacking-fly fishing-extravaganza with our old man and his friend from work, and right before we hit the trail the coworker opened up a cooler chock full of Crankyanker IPAs from Eddyline. Our dad told us that we could have “as many as we were willing to carry,” and so we stuffed our bag to the brim and stumbled into the backcountry with an extra 15 pounds in beer strapped to our backs, drinking with our dad and catching fish. Up until we turned 21, we kind of coveted the Crankyanker IPA as the ultimate craft beer holy grail, and it has always had a special, nostalgic place in our heart. The moral of the story? These guys have two locations in town. The beer kicks ass, there’s good pizzas and smashburgers, and they have awesome patios for you to sit and look at the mountains and talk about how cool you are after you summited that 14er.

Midland Tunnels

Just north of town are the Midland Tunnels, which are a series of tunnels that were utilized by the Colorado Midland Railway back in them there olden days. In fact, go google them right now, because we could almost guarantee you’ve seen them in some kind of Colorado-related propaganda somewhere. You can actually still drive through a lot of the tunnels, and there’s plenty of camping in this neck of the woods too, if you’re into using pit toilets and sleeping on the ground. 

 K’s Dairy Delite

Right in the middle of town is K’s Dairy Delite, which is a cutesy little burger joint with awesome ice cream that backs up to a town park. We stopped here a lot growing up, so much like the Crankyanker IPA, it’s a core memory of our youth. In fact, sometime in elementary school, our family stopped here and we were able to order a large ice cream AND mozzarella sticks right before we went on a family backpacking trip, and to make a short story way longer than it needs to be, that’s the most we’ve ever pooped in the woods, hands down.

Mt. Princeton Hot Springs Resort

If you’re a fan of hot springs, BV has a good one with Mount Princeton Resort. For $40 on weekdays and $45 on the weekends, you get a day pass to a large soaking pool, an exercise pool, an infinity pool, and several creekside hot springs to soak in. Perhaps most importantly, for an extra $7 you get unlimited rides on the 700-foot waterslides, which, you know, is like, pretty fucking sick. They’ve got a ton of lodging too, from rooms to big bougie cabins. If you don’t feel like sleeping on the ground, you could probably bunk here for the night. However, keep in mind, when your friends roll in from their campsite smelling like a campfire and talking with a holier-than-thou attitude about how much their back hurts from sleeping on the ground, you’re never going to hear the end of it.