Mile High City and More

Gorgeous hubby and I went and joined the Mile High Club! Not what you think, we’ve just come back from a fortnight’s holiday in Colorado. I appreciate that Colorado isn’t the foremost USA summer destination and quite honestly I’d like to keep it that way. I get that everyone aspires to ski at Aspen, Vail and Breckenridge, but seriously summer in the Rockies is awesomely amazing!

Let me give you the back story as to how we arrived at Colorado as the choice for the ‘big’ holiday this year. We all have a wish list of things, the ‘bucket list’ no less (although I feel this sounds just a tad terminal). On hubby’s bucket list was to see Ryan Adams live and to go to a concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre, this year the stars aligned, so it was decided we would build an entire holiday around this one event.

(image courtesy of www.reddit.com)

We’re not fans of connecting flights so we flew direct with British Airways to Denver. American immigration comes with its own fearsome reputation; we’ve had great, Washington DC through in 10 minutes and awful Phoenix – 2 hours. Denver was brilliant, electronic passport gates and through in 10 minutes.

The thing about all of the Rockies ski resorts is that they all work really hard to attract visitors in the summer in order to make their resorts a year-round destination of choice. This translates to so many free events and entertainment you could be truly spoiled for choice. There was free music concerts on at four towns within driving distance, add to this village rodeos, the summer baseball season and the paid for gigs at Red Rocks, what started out as a one event holiday ended up being jam-packed to the point that the I won the Scrabble tournament, but then we did only play one game.

I’m going to do a separate blog about my own personal top ten highlights of the holiday, right now I just want to whet your appetite about why you should maybe consider abandoning Florida or swapping California as a US holiday destination. The summer weather is amazing, mid to high 20s in the Rockies, add 10⁰c when you get to Denver. The air is clean and crisp, there’s lots of real old town America to discover.

Now, of course, there is the altitude to think about, we spent ten days at around 9,400ft so you need to be mindful about keeping hydrated and one delicious pint of Breckenridge Brewery’s Trademark Rye can floor you. You also need to remember that you are almost 2 miles closer to the sun than down at the English seaside so sun protection is an absolute must – even for my gorgeous hubby’s self-basting skin!

We finished the holiday off with a three night city break in Denver – what a revelation. Over the last ten years the urban renewal has been immense with beautiful brick warehouses turned over to loft-living, swathes of pedestrianised zones, and street art we walked our socks off!

Look out for the top ten coming soon, and next time you consider America think Mile High!

#Music #USA #History #Hubby #Heme #Colorado #Denver #Freebies