I highly recommend that you see the Denver City Limits sign...in your rear-view mirror.
dittos on the Denver City Limits sign. It’s not too great there, like most typical liberal cities. We seldom went up to Denver after a few goes. The scenery was nice out around Estes Park, but way too congested for me.
If it were me, hey I am biased, I would hot foot it down I25 to Colorado Springs(where we lived) and out to Pikes Peak. The mountain road out of Colorado springs, Woodland Park, Cripple Creek, and the Pikes Peak road itself, if it’s open, leads to some beautiful scenery. There is some really nice scenery in the foothills outside of Colorado Springs, just local roads all along the front range.
We four wheeled nearly every 14 teener in the state that you could climb with a Jeep when we lived there. The real scenic area is down in the south west corner, the San Juan Mtns. You can rent trail ready four wheelers in some small towns, but you best know what trail driving is all about before you do that. Stay out of mines ... !!!
Always carry warm clothes, some supplies, food, water, fire starters, flashlights, axe, base camping stuff — just in case. You can get blizzard conditions, several feet of snow really quick as late as June — And I mean when traveling normal roads. It happened to us outside of Denver on I25, middle of June, whiteout within and hour — and plenty of times when out four wheeling or skiing. Weather can change really fast. Be safe, don’t push it, Colorado can be rough going for the uninitiated.
Unfortunately that’s where the beauty really is, the outback. Fishing, May might be a little early, but near any stream or river should hold fish.
We went to Red Rocks. I consider that a must see.
Otherwise, I agree with you. There was some kind of festival going on downtown the day we arrived and it looked like kooksville to me.