COSights

By Astrid · 7 places

7 Quiet Corners of Colorado

Quiet corners while everyone else is elsewhere

Some of my favorite mornings in Colorado happened at places nobody lines up for. The state's famous spots have understudies, quieter and often just as good, where the parking lot holds four cars and the silence is part of the picture.

  1. A person in a white dress and hat stands in a sunlit field of tall golden grass, facing jagged red sandstone hogbacks and pine-covered foothills beyond. The warm light and wide composition give the scene a quiet, late-summer feel.
    1

    Morrison

    South Valley Park

    The same red hogback geology as Red Rocks, minus almost all of the people. The Swallow Trail puts you among the sandstone fins on a weekday morning with mule deer for company.

  2. Sunrise light warms smooth sandstone outcrops and pale rock ledges beneath a cloudy sky, with ponderosa pines and a charred tree trunk framing the foreground. The low angle emphasizes the layered, weathered formations across the mesa-like slope.
    2

    Colorado Springs

    Palmer Park

    Sandstone formations and mesa-top overlooks with Pikes Peak lined up to the west, inside city limits and somehow still overlooked. Drive to the upper mesa lots and the views come without the walk.

  3. A sunlit dirt trail winds through tall green grass toward the stone remains of Castlewood Dam, with canyon walls and rocky ridges rising beyond. The clear blue sky and scattered evergreens give the scene an open, dry morning feel.
    3

    Denver

    Castlewood Canyon State Park

    The ruins of a dam that failed in 1933 stand over Cherry Creek's quiet canyon, forty minutes from Denver and outside the mountain traffic entirely. The Inner Canyon Trail gets you close to the broken masonry and layered rock.

  4. Charles A. Lory State Park entrance sign stands in tall prairie grass under a pale, overcast sky, with a winding path leading into the foothills beyond. Low red rock ridges and rolling green hills frame the open landscape.
    4

    Fort Collins

    Lory State Park

    While the crowds cluster at Horsetooth's dams, the reservoir's west shore stays quiet. The climb to Arthur's Rock earns a panorama of water, hogbacks, and plains that you will likely share with no one.

  5. Sunlit red and tan sandstone cliffs rise above a dense band of bright green trees in Escalante Canyon, with a clear blue sky overhead. The scene feels lush and sheltered, contrasting the rugged rock walls with the spring-green vegetation below.
    5

    Delta

    Escalante Canyon

    A dirt road follows the creek past red sandstone walls to Captain Smith's one-room 1910 cabin, and on most days yours is the only car raising dust. Spring adds wildflowers and water to the frame.

  6. A deep blue alpine lake sits below a steep granite cirque and a cloud-wrapped peak, with patchy snow lingering on the rocky slopes. The foreground is a broad, grassy basin scattered with white boulders under a bright, hazy morning sky.
    6

    Ward

    Blue Lake (Indian Peaks)

    The steep 2.6 miles past Mitchell Lake filters the Brainard crowds down to a handful, and the lake under Mount Toll sits in a granite amphitheater that feels entirely yours. Cornices hang on the ridges into late summer.

  7. A gravel path leads into the Holzwarth Historic Site, where a weathered log cabin with a green roof sits in a meadow framed by split-rail fencing and tall evergreens. The National Park Service sign in the foreground anchors the scene against the forested mountain slope beyond.
    7

    Grand Lake

    Holzwarth Historic Site

    Weathered 1920s dude-ranch cabins in a meadow along the infant Colorado River, on the park's uncrowded west side. Late afternoon light on the Never Summer Range behind the log walls is the shot.

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