Our Colorado Honeymoon: A Week With Virtually No Plans
- Lynacy W
- Aug 23, 2019
- 16 min read
Updated: Sep 2, 2019
I want to start this post off by saying that this is going to be a really long one. I'm going to be talking about our trip day by day, and talk about what we did, the main places we stopped to eat, what we saw, and the places we stayed. There will also be a lot of pictures.
While we were trying to decide where we wanted to go for our honeymoon we went through quite a few location choices. We knew we wanted to be gone for about a week, didn't want to go anywhere full of people, and didn't want to spend a small fortune. We thought about Ireland, but that was one of the small fortune options, so we had to rule that one out. We also thought about Tennessee since I knew I wanted to see some beautiful mountains, but we decided against that one since I had been there before. San Antonio was on the table, but I didn't feel that was special enough as it's only a short drive and it didn't have the mountains I wanted to see. Finally we settled on Colorado. It had the mountains, plenty to see along the way, a lot of places that weren't full of people, and neither of us had been there before. The only real research I did was zooming in on the Rocky Mountains and finding a town. I googled Glenwood Springs, and found out it was in a gorgeous spot. It had a theme park on a mountain, a couple of beautiful hiking trails, and it had hot springs. That's how I decided Glenwood Springs was our final stop in Colorado. That's it. That's how I planned our honeymoon!
August 12th
Being the procrastinator that I am, our suitcases weren't packed all the way and our laundry wasn't all done for the trip on the day we were supposed to leave. It was okay though because we had to send our family back to California that day, and we didn't want to leave early enough to catch any bad traffic that day. We spent the day taking leftovers to my family, taking some of the caterer's stuff back to them, doing last minute laundry, and last minute packing. We left out that evening kind of late and decided to drive until I felt too tired to drive anymore. I did drive the entire trip by the way. I get car sick really bad and the last thing I wanted was to be nauseated on my honeymoon. We drove for around 5 hours and stopped in Childress, TX because at that point it was almost midnight and I was getting sleepy. We spent the night at a Super 8 hotel and decided we would get a fresh start in the morning.
August 13th
The next morning we gathered our things and checked out and headed north towards Oklahoma. We drove for about another 4 hours or so though some of the flattest and emptiest land I had ever seen in my life. Driving across the Oklahoma panhandle was one of the most boring things I have ever done in my life. We made a stop in Boise City to stretch our legs and grab a snack. While we were leaving we noticed a store named No Man's Land, which turned out to be the original storefront for our favorite beef jerky. It was a small random thing to be so excited about, but we were. We figured we would pop in, buy a fresh bag of jerky right from the source and be on our way. We ended up meeting the owner, he talked to us for probably an hour about the history of the company, how he grew it to the massive size it is now, and was overall a really friendly and cool guy. We bought a couple of bags of our favorite jerky, and he gave us a big sample bag of their then unreleased black pepper flavor as a wedding gift. He took a picture of us in front of the store and posted it on their Facebook page! That random pee stop, turned into a really cool experience for us. This was the first of a series of having good luck along the way.
From Boise City we headed north again to get to Colorado as fast as we could. We finished the long drive across the panhandle, and came into Colorado and passed through our first town named Campo. There still wasn't much to see yet, so we drove though to Lamar and stopped at a small diner named The Hickory House to get our dinner and decide on where we would spend our first night in Colorado.The diner was a little old school, nothing really all that fancy or amazing. The food was good and priced fairly. The people were nice. That was more than enough for us. We hopped on Air B&B to see what was around for a fair price. I stumbled across a listing for a place called Three Dog Night. It was a guesthouse, which was nice since we wouldn't have to be in someone's actual house. It was on a lake, and it looked really nice. I booked it and waiting for approval while we ate. After filling up, and getting the approval, we headed west toward La Junta then worked our way toward the B&B which was out in the middle of nowhere. It was outside of a tiny town called Sugar City which was pretty fitting if you think about it. It was also located right on the Lake Meredith Reservoir away from town and away from neighbors. The owner was named Kiki, and she was the sweetest thing! Her husband and dogs were super sweet as well. The place was nicer than it even showed in the pictures, which was a pleasant surprise. They had a beautiful house, and the guesthouse was just as nice. The yard was huge and well maintained and it had it's own little beach. We spent the rest of the daylight dipping our toes in the water, hanging out in the hammock down by the lake, and finally just settling in. That night we decided to grab a blanket and relax in the hammock in the front yard to just stare at the stars. We accidentally caught the Perseid Meteor shower that night and watched the sky for a few hours curled up in a blanket and enjoying the cool breeze blowing in over the lake. Yet another time we randomly got lucky on our trip! We had no idea there was a meteor shower that night, but we were in a perfect spot to see it.
August 14th
We woke in the morning feeling refreshed and ready to start on the next leg of our trip. We hit the road to Pueblo. This was our first larger town we hit along the way and the different ways of Colorado soon became apparent. There were billboards and signs for Cannabis dispensaries everywhere you looked. It was such a weird feeling to see ads for stuff that was prosecuted so harshly at home. We figured that we would check one out to see what it was like inside one of the stores, and well "When in Rome". We stopped at a place called Maggie's Farm in East Pueblo. The place had the feel of a clinic at first. You walk in, they get your info, run your ID, and explain what to do. We were taken back to the store where we greeted the worker with a bunch of questions. The woman was super sweet and explained everything really well. The workers there were all really nice and very well educated in their field. After a bit of time there, and a million questions later, we were ready for our late lunch. We headed to a gas station and topped off and spotted a tiny diner nearby and decided to give it a shot. We went to more local places on the trip because we can get fast food anywhere, but these local places are special and unique. We settled on Dana's Lil Kitchen. The place was really really small but comfy. It had the feeling of eating at your grandparents house. Our waitress was sweet and the food was good and came in large quantities. I had the best BLT I have ever had here. I snapped a picture of a beautiful painting they had on the wall and we finished up our meal.
With our stomachs and gas tank full we headed to Canon City for no particular reason other than I was ready to see some real mountains finally. We got into town and stopped in a random parking lot and just marveled at the view for a while. I found out about the Tunnel Drive Trail and we decided to just go for it and take the hike. We drove over to the trail head and started on our way.
The first bit of the trail is kind of rough. It starts out pretty steep so most of the elevation gain (240 feet) happened fairly quick, but after that the trail is pretty flat the rest of the way. The trail is 2 miles out and 2 miles back. It takes you up on the side of a mountain and runs directly next to the Arkansas River and the Royal Gorge Railway. Along the trail we saw a train, people kayaking, lizards, and the beautiful stripes of rock in the side of the mountain. Those stripes show the spots that used to be 11 miles underground before the mountains were formed. Along the trail are 3 tunnels blasted through granite. They provide a nice breezy spot to rest in the shade before heading down the rest of the trail. Since this was our first trip up a mountain, it did make us quite puffy to go up that fast. It wasn't a serious or concerning amount of puffy though luckily. My one regret is not bringing a bit more water and a hat.
Now that we had walked a solid 4 miles, we were pooped. We were off to the next town to find dinner and a place to rest for the night. Next was Colorado Springs, which was beautiful. We were finally getting to the classic scenic parts of Colorado I wanted to see. We chose Dickey's BBQ for dinner this time because we were really hungry and meat sounded good. This was the only place we stopped for dinner that wasn't really local, but it wasn't McDonald's so it worked. While eating we made an attempt to find a hotel or Air B&B to stay at but the service was terrible for us at this point and we didn't have WiFi access so we had to just find a place on our own after dinner. After driving around a bit a place caught our eye, and luckily their sign outside said they had vacancies. The El Colorado Lodge was the place to be that night. Now technically we were in a small part of town on the edge called Manitou Springs. We booked our room and settled in. The rooms were adobe style huts in a duplex type of layout. Your door went straight outside to a patio with your own little picnic table. Most of the cabins were a brown color but ours were green. Can you guess why? They were their 420 friendly cabins. They had made a deal with the dispensary next door that gave up the extra parking to them to use and in exchange they painted a couple of cabins green and referred people to that shop. It was a win-win for them and the cabins looked cute painted green.
It ended up storming that night and our little cabin was in the perfect place to watch it happen. Directly across the street was a view of a few different mountains. We were faced towards Pike's Peak and a couple of other big ones. Watching the lighting behind the mountains and the sound of the rain was absolutely indescribable. Storms in the mountains are a completely different experience than I had ever had before. Needless to say we slept hard that night.
August 15th
Morning came which meant it was time to hit the road again! We knew our next stop needed to be Glenwood Springs if we wanted to actually stay there for a couple of nights. We headed north towards Denver. We thought about stopping in Denver but decided against it because the traffic would set us back too far into the day. We went west of Denver toward Vail, then through Avon. At this point the views as went just got better and better. We had seen some mountains along the way so far, but the farther west we headed the more massive they grew.
After driving for a couple more hours and passing a few "one exit towns", we came upon Glenwood Canyon. This canyon was carved into the Earth over 3 million years by the Colorado River. The canyon is about 15 miles long and the walls go up about 1,300 feet. It's the largest canyon on the Upper Colorado River. The drive through the canyon was the first time I had ever encountered a "run away truck ramp", which is exactly what it sounds like. It was also my first time driving on such a steep decline, and my first time driving through a tunnel that passed through a mountain. The drive alone was fun, but the scenery was the best part. As we journeyed farther into the canyon, it slowly got more and more magical looking. I didn't know the Earth could look like that. It never crossed my mind I guess. I don't have any amazing photography of the area, but we have a few Jonathan took out the window for me. If you're curious feel free to Google it. There are wonderful professional pictures of it out there.
Our last stop before Glenwood Springs was the Hanging Lake hiking trail. Now keep in mind we did a four mile hike the day before. I don't know what we were thinking. I guess we were feeling ambitious. This trail taught me some life lessons. The first one being this: RESEARCH THE TRAIL BEFORE YOU HIKE IT! We knew it was about 3 miles round trip and took you up to a beautiful lake you can't touch. What we didn't know is that the trail was steep, and slightly dangerous. We didn't know there were bears in the area (don't worry, we didn't see any), and we didn't know we would be almost running out of water half way though to the top. That trail is classified as moderate to difficult, so I don't really recommend taking children or anyone who has weak legs or gets exhausted too easily. The elevation gain on this trail is about 1,135 feet so you end up really, really high up. Now I know this sounds like torture for some, but I would do it again in a heartbeat. The views are out of this world. Beautiful. We took tons of pictures here, because, honestly, it was just breathtaking. A few of the following pictures will be full size so you can get the full effect of the view, and some will be put in a collage so this page doesn't end up 3 times as long. The first collage is the exhausted selfies we took, the second will be random pictures we took up the trail complete with a couple of pictures of chipmunks and birds, and the third will be a couple of pictures of spouting rock which is on the trail just above the Hanging Lake.
Our journey back down had us really feeling the full effect of the hike up the mountain. My legs felt like noodles, and at some points I had to be really careful not to fall from my legs giving out. This is also when we were really regretting not bringing at least double the water that we did. Next time we will be taking our backpacks with the camel bag things, and extra bottles in the backpack as well. Luckily our entire trip had beautiful weather so we didn't really get hot. The whole trip we were sitting in the mid 80s most of the time, which was a glorious change from August in Texas. Once we were back down and loaded back into the car we were EXHAUSTED. It was time to head into Glenwood Springs finally. Yay! When we finally got to town we made a pit stop and started looking for our hotel for the night. We figured we deserved something a little extra this night. I found the Historic Hotel Colorado and we booked a balcony room for the honeymooners we were. The hotel was beautiful in such a classic way. It opened in 1893 and frequently hosted some important figures such as Theodore Roosevelt, William Taft, and even Al Capone. Supposedly this is also where the Teddy Bear was first created as a gift to Theodore from some of the female workers. This hotel has a Polo Lounge, a Courtyard Cafe, the Hotel Colorado Restaurant and Bar, and the Legends Coffee Shop. The lobby is large and very classically decorated as they tried to stay with the antique look and feel the building has. What I didn't know when we booked is that the hotel was allegedly haunted, which makes sense because of the age. I can't even be mad, and I kind of count this as lucky for me. Now, I didn't see any ghosts or hear anything but the entire floor just felt heavy. We didn't see any of the other guests on our trips up and down either so that was odd. I did however have a lot of trouble sleeping that night. I constantly felt like I was impeding on someone else's territory. I didn't feel in danger or anything scary, but I felt watched and unwelcome. I spent half the night on the patio just looking out on the town and enjoying the cool weather. Jonathan slept easy that night which was understandable since we were both worn out from the hike and full from our dinner at the Courtyard Cafe. Now, I have to say, that cafe was expensive as heck and for good reason. The atmosphere was pretty romantic, the food was incredible, the service was outstanding, and the drinks were full strength. We spent a stupid amount of money on dinner that night and I have absolutely no regrets at all. This hotel quickly became one of my favorite places despite the immense amount of energy in the historical building. I highly recommend checking it out if you're in the area and like haunted places. Below i'm going to put a collage of some of the decor they had to show the type of vibe it had.
August 16th
We woke up feeling pretty good considering what we just put ourselves through over the last couple of days. Jonathan had some of the room coffee and then we decided to check out the coffee shop downstairs. Long story short I may have had two lattes from the shop. They called it the Brown Bear Latte and it was glorious. Jonathan also bought me a little teddy bear as a souvenir from the shop. I left the hotel feeling energized (I wonder why) and excited to start a new adventure. That being said, our next stop was the Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park. It is a mountaintop theme park, and it is such a cool place. We didn't get a lot of pictures here since we were on rides most of the time and on cave tours. If you're curious about what the terrifyingly fun rides look like their website has some awesome pictures. We rode the Haunted Mine Drop, Giant Canyon Swing, Soaring Eagle Zip Ride, Cliffhanger Roller Coaster, and the Glenwood Canyon Flyer. We also went on the Fairy Cave, and King's Row Cave Tours. We only missed out on one ride, and since we were there they have added another cave tour. This place was a big deal for both Jonathan and I to go and ride stuff in. We are both scared of heights and basically all the rides swing you over a cliff or off the side of a literal mountain. You'll see below just how high up the theme park really is. It was a ton of fun, but I'm surprised I didn't break Jonathan's hand from squeezing it so hard on the rides honestly.
The next two pictures are from the King's Row Cave Tour. The one on the left is with the lights on, and the one on the right is with a blacklight turned on. My favorite thing about this tour was our guide. Her name was Rebecca, and her nickname was Chewbecca for a good reason. She did an extremely impressive Chewbacca impression. She was very funny and made the tour fun.
We spent a handful of hours there and stayed at the hotel at the base on the mountain where we started the ride up the mountain. It was called The Hotel Glenwood Springs which, by the way, is pet friendly and has a pizza place downstairs. It's a pretty nice hotel. Later that day we went off to check out some hot springs. We ended up at the Glenwood Springs Hot Springs Pool. That was a good choice. It's so nice and warm and spacious. It was perfect for our oh so very tired bodies that day. We went back to the hotel and took advantage of the in room jacuzzi to wash off all the minerals and sweat we accumulated at the hot springs. We were pretty worn out by this time so we ate dinner at the Pizza Cave downstairs. A little later in the evening we had an ice cream craving so we headed to a really cool little shop called Kaleidoscoops. With that, our day was done and we crashed hard on our last night in Colorado.
August 17th
Today was the day we started back home. we headed back towards Avon and headed south from there on Highway 24 and got to drive through some more of the White River National Forest. This highway was another fun one to drive. It was absolutely gorgeous and we actually pulled over before leaving the mountains so I could sprinkle a little bit of my grandmother's ashes in a beautiful spot.
Somewhere along the way home we stopped in a small-ish town on Hwy 24 and walked down their Main Street. We checked out a couple of antique shops, and stopped for dinner at a restaurant. I sadly cannot remember what town it was for the life of me. I also cannot remember the name of the places we went in town. All we know is that they had a handful of artfully painted mountain goat statues randomly placed on the street we walked down. If anyone has any idea what town this is please let me know. It's probably going to drive me batty until I know. We drove for a few more hours ad stopped to stretch our legs in Trinidad before leaving Colorado and heading into New Mexico. We could have went back though Oklahoma, but I wanted to be able to say that I had been to New Mexico. I only drove through the state for a couple of hours and I hated every minute of it. I caught a bunch of road work. We kept on through there and stopped in Amarillo for the night at a Comfort Inn.
August 18th
The entire day was spent on the road. We drove for 10 hours that day to get home so we could have a full day at home the next day before going back to work. Once we finally got home we were happy to be out of the car, but it was definitely bittersweet to be back. We did just spend a whole week with no plans and no responsibility after all.
So here is what we learned from this trip.
1. Research a trail before you hike it.
2. Always keep extra water with you.
3. Starbucks and gas is what fuels road trips.
4. Plan at least a little bit. We missed some stuff we would have loved to see that was so close to us along the way and we had no idea. The Manitou Cliff Dwellings for example were about 4 miles from El Colorado Lodge.
5. Partake in local shops and food every chance you get, because it's almost always better in every way.
If you read this far, kudos to you. I know it was a long one. I mostly wrote this and compiled the pictures for selfish reasons and for family to see, but if you enjoyed it too then I'm happy. Hopefully this can give someone an idea for at least one stop on their trip through Colorado. I look forward to returning to the state, hopefully for good eventually.
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