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Sights Overview

A little planning goes a long way when deciding what attractions to visit in Northwest Colorado. Grand Junction, the largest city between Denver and Salt Lake City, makes the ideal hub for exploring the region. Many of the sights, with the notable exception of Steamboat Springs, are less than a two-hour drive from Grand Junction. You can make the loop from Delta to Cedaredge and Grand Mesa to Palisade easily in a day. If you want to break up the trip, stop at one of the clusters of cabins atop the mesa, or in the lovely town of Cedaredge overnight. The loop in the opposite direction -- including Rifle, Meeker, Craig, Dinosaur National Monument, and Rangely -- is quite a bit longer, but there's decent lodging in any of the stops along the way, with the exception of Dinosaur National Monument (unless you're prepared to camp).

If you're headed to Steamboat Springs from Denver in winter, exercise caution on Highway 40. It sees less traffic than I-70, but it can be treacherous in the Berthoud Pass stretch during snowstorms.

Steamboat Springs

Steamboat is a place where Stetson hats are sold for shade and not for souvenirs, and the Victorian-era buildings, most of them fronting the main drag of Lincoln Avenue, were built to be functional, not ornamental. It was founded in the 1800s as a ranching and farming community, setting it apart from the mining towns of Breckenridge and Aspen. These early settlers were responsible for the advent of skiing in the area; they strapped wooden boards to their feet so they could get around town in winter.

When sizing up the mountain, keep in mind that the part that's visible from below is only the tip of the iceberg -- much more terrain lies concealed in back. Steamboat is famed for its eiderdown-soft snow; in fact, the term "champagne powder" was coined (and amusingly enough registered as a trademark) here to describe the area's unique feathery drifts, the result of Steamboat's fortuitous position between the arid desert to the west and the moisture-magnet of the Continental Divide to the east, where storm fronts duke it out.

If you're looking for hellacious steeps and menacing couloirs, you won't find them in Steamboat, but you will discover what is perhaps the finest tree skiing in America. Beginning and intermediate skiers rave about the wide-open spaces of Sunshine Bowl and Storm Peak. Steamboat also earns high marks for its comprehensive children's programs and the Billy Kidd Center for Performance Skiing, where you can learn demanding disciplines such as powder, mogul, and tree skiing.

The mountain village, with its maze of upscale condos, boutiques, and nightclubs, is certainly attractive. It's a bit too spread out -- and too new -- to have developed much character. To its credit, though, this increasingly trendy destination has retained much of its down-home friendliness, providing the trappings while avoiding the trap of other resorts.