Spring is in the air,

which means the time to stave off our incoming existential crises by driving away from our home with some poorly organized camping gear haphazardly thrown into our trunk in a panicked search for meaning is upon us. Here’s our list of road trip spots and as long as you imagine doing all of these activities in a Subaru while wearing a Melanzana jacket, you’ll be fine.

North

If we were, say, located in Fort Collins, or looking to explore the northern part of the state, we’d probably spend the first day of our trip out at Red Feather Lakes. It’s pretty, and we’ll probably get a death threat or two for writing about it. Then, we’d drive our Outback over to The Tavern to drink four hazy IPAs before asking our girlfriend to drive us to our campsite (you know, because we’re responsible people). On the second day, we’d probably push out to Steamboat Springs, all in the hopes of eating a Dirty Harry Burger at Back Door Grill. It’s a burger with peanut butter on it, and before your small mind starts shitting on it, consider this counterpoint: It’s really, really good. Once we satiate our constant urge for one of the only burger establishments we routinely have wet dreams about, we’d probably go bathe our food baby in the warm waters of Strawberry Hot Springs. It’s clothing optional after dark, so we don’t want you to freak out after you hit your hash pen in your car at dusk and then walk out to the pools to see a bunch of wang. 

The Extra Mile: If you’ve got a long weekend or some extra time to kill, push all the way out to Dinosaur National Monument in the northwest corner of the state. It feels like Mars and Jurassic Park had a baby, though we’ve never fully grasped whether the dinosaurs there died out a while back or if they just go into hiding like every time we try to check out the Silverback Gorillas at the zoo.

West

If we were going to head west into the great Rocky Mountains from the Denver area, we’d do it by hopping on 285. I70 is a cesspool autobahn filled with blind toddlers who just got behind the wheel for the first time, and whether it’s winter or summer, we’d rather shit in our own hands and clap than ever drive any stretch of that road willingly.

Unfortunately, it divides our state in half and to get to pretty places in Colorado, you’ll probably have to get on it at some point, and we’re sorry if that comment about blind toddlers gives you anxiety. We believe in you! Just close your eyes and hope for the best, just like every other soul that drives that road.

Anyway, we’d hop on 285 and take it out to Fairplay to see all of the South Park shit. Indeed, in 2025, when all of our time is a commodity and everything is precious, we can’t imagine anything cooler than spending hours driving out to a small town that has ties to a cartoon that stopped being funny in 2018.

From there we’d, unfortunately, hop on I70 to take it out to Glenwood Springs. We’re not sure if you’ve read our other articles, but the town has a theme park built into the side of a mountain and it is the kittie’s titties. They have a hot spring too, and it’s relatively affordable compared to some other mineral water shakedowns we’ve visited in this state.

The Extra Mile: If you’ve got the time, take I70 all the way out to Grand Junction and Fruita. Does Junction have some of the coolest geological sites to see in the entire state, if not the western continental United States? Absolutely. Are we really only suggesting this area because the mountain biking in Fruita followed by a pizza pie from Hot Tomato Pizza is the closest we’ve ever come to truly being happy? You bet your ass.

South

Now if we were wanting to head down south, we’d probably start out making a beeline for Manitou Springs. Here, we can hit the Manitou Incline, which is just an egregiously long staircase. It’s miserable, and we don’t do it for the experience but for the condescending and holier-than-thou attitude we can use on our friends the next time we go out for beers. Then, we’ll take the missus out shopping in downtown Manitou Springs, where she’ll, without a doubt, find some shit she doesn’t need, like a felt hat, or a painted brass chicken that’s supposed to be a quirky lawn ornament. There’s a hot spring here too, but we never went after getting slightly too stoned in the Manitou Springs arcade and playing skeeball for what felt like an incredibly long amount of time.

The Extra Mile: If you can take it even further south, there’s a UFO watchtower in Center with some interesting lore, and there’s a gator farm in Mosca that claims to offer gator wrestling lessons. The last time we went they had that one alligator from Happy Gilmore, but we don’t know if that’s the case anymore, and to be honest we’d feel awful if you planned your entire weekend getaway around seeing the alligator from Happy Gilmore only to get there and learn that he went to live at the great gator farm in the sky. But he’s probably still around, right? Right?!