Rockin’ the Rockies: How to Spend a Week Exploring Colorado
Boasting world-class beer, legalized cannabis, and the heart and soul of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado is one hell of a state…
An Armchair Historian on the Centennial State:
Like most of the West, the territory that would become Colorado was part of the French, Spanish, and Mexican empires prior to incorporation within the United States (the state’s name, tr. colorful, refers to the early Spanish explorers’ awe at the brilliant hues of the sky, mountains, and flora on the roof of North America). The U.S. acquired the territory that would become the Centennial State (so nicknamed because it gained statehood in 1876) in two chunks: the eastern half from France as the part of the Louisiana Purchase and the western portion from Mexico as spoils of war in the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848. Texas also sold a portion of Southern Colorado to the U.S. government after the Lone Star State joined the Union in 1845.
Although fur traders and frontiersmen were already long-established, the latter half of the 19th century beckoned the first major waves of Anglo settlers to the territory that became Denver. As with the gold-lusting Conquistadors who sought El Dorado here centuries before, the majority of the American settlers to the rugged valleys of the Rocky Mountains were young, unmarried men seeking their fortunes in metals and minerals pulled from the earth. Unbalanced testosterone in the burgeoning mining towns meant that Colorado—as in other parts of the West—had looser vice laws. Opinions were laxer regarding gambling, prostitution, and other such activities that would have scandalized a self-respecting East Coast Yankee. (Perhaps Colorado was the first state to fully legalize weed due to this mind-your-own-damn-business libertarian spirit that originated in the mining-town era.) These demographics combined with the isolation of the state’s deep-mountain settlements also meant that the rule of law was often tenuous; vigilantism took the place of courts and police for much of Colorado’s early history.
Nowadays, rather than the miners, cowboys, and outlaws of olden times, Colorado beckons outdoor enthusiasts, climbers, skiers, and as of the last decade or so, entrepreneurs and connoisseurs of a particular crop. While some of the most pampered playgrounds of the hyper-rich might be in Colorado (more on Aspen and Vail later), the frontier spirit of the West is still alive here. For the type who might prefer a well-made Negroni in a hip restaurant over the Great Outdoors—I include myself in this category—Colorado’s bounty is equally rich as for the skier, climber, or fly fisherman.
Denver:
The River North Art District (RiNo) is well worth a walkabout for its restaurants, sundry breweries and cafés, and above all else, the dazzling street art that embellishes just about every inch of concrete and brick in this neighborhood.
RiNo’s Central Market is a sizable food hall where chefs, baristas, butchers, bartenders, chocolatiers, and more sell their wares. The Rueben with local pastrami and the gruyere grilled cheese from Culture Meat and Cheese are tasty enough to send you on your way singing. If I had had more time, I would have taken home some of the locally raised lamb, beef, or bacon from the butcher shop in Central Market.
Downtown Denver is worth exploring for a few hours, especially the Denver Art Museum and the Colorado State Capitol. The homelessness in Denver is high—tent cities are ubiquitous throughout the city—and the downtown is its epicenter. In the brief amount of time I strolled through the downtown area, I lost count of how many crazy people I encountered shouting to themselves or at the police.
Due to COVID restrictions, I got turned away from the Denver Art Museum the first time I went but managed to snag the last two tickets the second time. If you want to check it out—and it’s an excellent museum worth at least two hours—reserve your tickets online (~$15 for an adult) early in the day you plan to go. When we visited, fantastic exhibits on Victorian British art and the portfolio of Norman Rockwell were on display. My one gripe is that there didn’t seem to be much in the way of Colorado and the Rockies’ artistic heritage.
Boulder:
Boulder, about 45 minutes from Denver by car, is a vibrant medley of hippies and students. The small city is home to the University of Colorado Boulder as well as Naropa University, the most eminent Buddhist university in North America. On the day we were there, the climate was sunny with a crisp coolness, and the mountain-framed sky was as clean and blue as if God had taken a Lysol wipe to the heavens.
Some of the finest restaurants in Colorado are in Boulder, but we stuck to the simple options (which still weren’t cheap). If you’re after fresh, organic fare, there are few locales better than Boulder. Perhaps from the Buddhist presence, vegetarians kitchens abound, even a few Tibetan restaurants. Be wary of the prices in Boulder—everything from food to gas to the extra face mask we had to buy was overpriced.
Zoe Ma Ma, located near Boulder’s central plaza in a cluster of small, buzzing restaurants, serves up authentic Sichuanese cuisine. The duck soup was a highlight. Oskar Blues Taproom, also located on Boulder’s main drag, is a well-known Colorado brewery that I had seen in grocery stores in Texas. (The taproom is small, so I believe their main brewery is located somewhere else in the state.) They were solid, but the other breweries I tried in Denver were more interesting (more on Colorado breweries later).
Vail:
If you like mountain sports, fine dining, outdoor fireplaces, and/or botoxed housewives in yoga attire, then you’ll love Vail. The three-hour drive from Denver to Vail is mesmerizing, especially when blessed with a clear day to fully take in the views of the mountains. We spent just a few hours in Vail, enough time to check out the weekly Vail Farmers Market and Art Show (10 a.m. – 3 p.m.) and to meander through the streets and plazas and admire the Swiss-village-inspired architecture. The farmer’s market had some delicious food and drink, but the prices were off-putting ($12 for a tiny sandwich).
I found Vail rather sterilized and plastic; I was ready to move on with the road trip after a few hours. Unlike Aspen, which has a rich history stretching back to the settling of the Rockies, Vail was constructed in 1966, with its raison-d’etre to serve as a high-end ski-resort town. I would have skipped it altogether if I had known how cool Aspen, my next stop, would be.
Aspen:
If Vail is nouveau-riche then Aspen is old money: understated, historical, and far more charming. I was struck by how much this gorgeous little corner of the Rockies reminded me of Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. The characters in Aspen looked nearly indistinguishable from the preppy, pastel-clad New Englanders I grew up with. Well, as it turns out, they basically are the same people. The jet setters who summer in Maine or the Vineyard spend the ski season here.
The Aspen Tap Room served a delicious flight of suds (out of a modified ski, no less) and some decent pizza. As you would expect, there is world-class dining in Aspen. Check out “restaurant row” for some kick-ass options to delight your inner-gastronome.
Be careful when driving from Aspen back to Denver—the tortured two-lane road through the mountains is gnarly, especially at night or during foul weather. There were switchback turns for about 100 miles, and the route took much longer than Waze projected.
Of the places I visited in Colorado, Aspen was my favorite. If I could do the jaunt through the Rockies all over again, I would have booked an Airbnb in Aspen and then spent at least a couple days exploring some of the smaller towns in its periphery. Steamboat Springs, about three hours from Aspen, is another handsome mountain town, famous for its world-class skiing and hot springs. Soak your physical and spiritual pains away in the steaming, sulfur-stinking baths at Strawberry Park Hot Springs. Bathers go au naturale after dark. Leadville is a saloon-studded town en route between Aspen and Denver. As the name suggests, Leadville used to be a rough-n-tumble lead mining town but is now better known as a haven for extreme sports fanatics. Historic Leadville feels like the Old West and also holds the title of being the highest town (10,151 ft.) in the U.S.
Dispensaries:
Speaking of really high, a few words about legal cannabis in Colorado. Now, I don’t regularly indulge in the herbal refreshments, but when in Rome…
To be frank, many of the dispensaries I visited—about six or seven in total—had the exact same feel as trashy head shops (those gross stores that sell kratom, Cheech-n-Chong posters, bongs and pipes labeled “For Tobacco Use Only,” incense, and so forth). The clientele and employees in the dispensaries matched this less-than-classy vibe. Kind Love, the closest dispensary to the airport, and the dispensaries I patronized in RiNo fit this description most. A few of the dispensaries, like Green Dragon, felt more like wine shops than head shops, and the “budtenders” were knowledgeable and described their wares with the reverence of a sommelier describing a fine vintage.
There are hundreds of dispensaries in Colorado (welcome to the Green Rush), and many specialize in a particular facet of cannabis culture (e.g. edibles, concentrates, indicas, tinctures). Google reviews are useful for vetting dispensaries and knowing where to go for the best prices for, say, concentrates, edibles, flower, topicals, or any of the other myriad herbal offerings.
I can unhesitatingly say that I enjoyed the best weed of my life to date in Colorado. Also, by the time I left the state, I felt like I had taken a graduate-school-level course on the intricacies of cannabis and the innumerable ways to consume it (you can really geek out on weed if you want to). As I said, I am not a stoner in regular life, but I was stoked to sample—100% legally at that—the highest-quality stuff that money can buy.
Dispensaries Basics: You have to be 21 years old to enter a dispensary, and they are rigorous about checking I.D.s at the door. Many of the dispensaries are cash-only, but some do accept cards. They were usually busy, and we had to wait around 20 minutes on average to go inside. Like strip clubs and casinos, dispensaries have no windows and make you feel like you’re teetering on edge of legal and illegal—which, in fact, you are since cannabis is still a Schedule 1 as far as the Federal Government is concerned. Dispensary employees get weirded out if you take out your phone frequently, or if you move around too much to look at the product. (Hey, bro, can you, like, just chill out and, like, slow down.) When you do make your purchase, it comes in a marijuana-themed Happy Meal bag.
As far as I understand, consuming cannabis is still illegal in public places. So, nope, you can’t light up a jay on the street or in your car as if it were a cigarette. Also, I believe you can also get a DUI pretty quickly if a cop pulls you over and suspects that you had recently gotten stoned. Better to save those green treats for the porch of the Airbnb.
Cannabis Concentrates:
The vast, strange, and colorful universe of concentrates was my favorite part of the Colorado cannabis culture. Concentrates are basically high-tech hash, concentrated THC, CBD, aromatic terpenes, and other cannabinoids (there are dozens of psychoactive compounds in cannabis, by the way) stripped from the unprocessed plant matter. If wine were flower (unprocessed bud), then concentrates would be brandy—distilled and much more potent. The process of making high-quality concentrates is complex and requires laboratory know-how and some sophisticated equipment.
Concentrates smell heavenly—complex melanges of citrus, pine, and floral notes—and range in hues from across the rainbow: bright green, burgundy, creamy oranges, reds, and yellows. Depending on their texture and consistency, they are put in categories like shatter, crumble, wax, resin, oil—the list is endless. Like flower, concentrates are further categorized as indicia, sativa, or hybrid and are named after the strain of flower from which they were extracted (e.g. Sour Diesel, Wedding Cake, Durban Poison, OG Emerald, and hundreds of others).
Dab pens, basically a Juul for weed, are one of the most popular and convenient ways to consume concentrates and run you about $20 a cartridge, plus the initial pen. Some concentrates, such as live resins, require refrigeration, while others are stored at room temperature. The THC and CBD levels are listed on their containers, and the “budtenders” will gladly describe the varying effects of any given concentrates. I saw one concentrate with a THC concentrate above 90%, but usually, they hover around 70-80%.
If you’re feeling courageous (or foolhardy), sign up for a dab tour (about $200/person) to get chauffeured to 3-4 selected dispensaries and farms to sample high-quality concentrates. Depending on the tour, they’ll also give you about $100 worth of concentrate to take back afterward.
More Ways to Get Legally Stoned:
Let me tell you, dear friends, they can put weed in anything. Edibles are another galaxy unto themselves, and many dispensaries specialize in weed-infused food. The most popular scooby snacks are gummies, chocolates, and baked goods. There are even THC/CBD-infused beverages (super weird). Edibles hit you differently and for a longer stretch of time; tread lightly with them at first. THC-delivery transdermal patches are in vogue, as are creams and other topical products. Another personal favorite was the cannabis-infused Epsom salt. An evening bath with a few scoops of that stuff is guaranteed to knock you out before bed and send you into the deepest reaches of dreamland.
Breweries in Colorado:
For the craft-brew connoisseur (roughly 97% of suburban Caucasian males aged 20-40), Colorado is the land of milk and honey. The climate and water in Colorado make for exceptionally high-quality beer, and the Centennial State is home to some of the celebrated breweries in the U.S., such as New Belgium, Oskar Blues, not to mention Coors. Portland, Oregon and Asheville, North Carolina might be the only cities that could contend for having as many excellent breweries as Denver.
I asked a friend who works for a major craft brewery in New Orleans for recommendations for Denver, and every one of his suggestions was superb. Two former chemists opened Cerebral Brewery, and they serve flights, samplings of four or five small (4 oz.) pours, out of beaker glasses. Cerebral brews several of their offerings in a traditional German foeder, a gargantuan wooden brewing barrel whose production has become something of a lost art and takes several years to manufacture. I would proffer that the flight I had at Cerebral—a sour, a porter, some lighter styles, and a couple of IPAs—was one of the best I have ever had.
Crooked Stave specializes in sours and funky brews—not my style of choice, but interesting nonetheless. (My girlfriend loves sours, and Crooked Stave was by far her favorite brewery). As the name would suggest, their beers range from the whimsical to the downright bizarre, with all kinds of unlikely fruits and herbs thrown in the mix. Ratio in RiNo is fantastic as well, every style I sampled, from their jet-black coffee porter to the tantalizingly light pilsners, were on-point. Two previously mentioned breweries are Aspen Tap Room, worth visiting if you’re in that neck of the wood, and Oskar Blues Taproom in Boulder, also worth a visit when in that town.
Some Fire Restaurants in Denver:
If you want to splurge on an excellent restaurant, go to Acorn. The chef-owner, a native of Italy, trains other chefs from across the country in the art of pasta-making. Everything we ordered at Acorn was simple and exquisite: a house-made pretzel for an appetizer; mushroom-stuffed ravioli and a bacon cheeseburger for entrees; and the chocolate cake for dessert. The bar program, specializing in classic, Prohibition Era cocktails, is rock solid as well. For a three-course meal for two with drinks, the ticket was not as big as I expected.
Blue Pan Pizza serves up Detroit-Style square pizzas (what I had always called Sicilian-style) and is another eatery where you cannot go wrong with anything. Several locals we met in Denver said that this was the best pizza in the city. RiNo is chock-full of fabulous fare, and the aforementioned Osaka Ramen and Culture Deli were also big wins.
