Explore Colorado – 8 Resources for Your Next Close-to-Home Road Trip

Itching for adventure in the midst of a pandemic? Why not explore your own home state?! The library has great inspiration for a Colorado road trip.

Here a few ideas to get you started:

Backroads and Byways of Colorado: Drives, Day Trips & Weekend Excursions on OverDrive. This practical guidebook (updated for 2020!) includes the authors’ expert insights into the state’s must-see sites, memorable meals, and cozy lodgings. This is the shortest route you can take to explore like a native and the perfect way for residents to delve deeper into the history and magic of Colorado. (Pre-release: Expected September 14, 2020)

Fishing Colorado: An Angler’s Complete Guide to More Than 125 Top Fishing Spots. Updated and revised, this second edition of the popular Fishing Colorado pinpoints over 125 of the best fisheries in the state along with information on fishing techniques, best times of year, favorite flies and lures, and camping facilities.

Get inspired with The Colorado Adventure video series from Kanopy, on all the recreation Colorado has to offer.

Find out what’s chirping on your adventure, with our Bird Watching Kit from the Gadgets & Things collection. It includes a pair of binoculars and a book about birding.

Check Out State Parks: Colorado Library Pass from our Gadgets & Things collection. This activity backpack includes everything you need to enjoy and explore nature – a Colorado State Parks and Wildlife park pass, a guide to Colorado’s State Parks, a wildlife pocket guide, a trees & wildflowers pocket guide, a “leave no trace” reference card, a set of binoculars, and information on activity ideas, fishing, and seasonal star charts.

Access Anything: Colorado: Adventuring with Disabilities. Colorado is an adventure state and it leads the country in accessible outdoor activities. This book will guide people with disabilities and their travel partners to some of the best places Colorado has to offer. Includes general travel tips and addresses the needs of travelers young to old, paraplegic to quadriplegic, manual to power chair. From the most mobile to the least active person, this book will help readers decide where they can go, and what they can do once they get there.

Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps. Written to inform and entertain the general reader, this book will be a delight for armchair adventurers as well as invaluable for vacationers interested in visiting the sites of these Colorado boomtowns. Most of the places are no longer shown on modern road maps, and special maps of the region have been prepared for this book.

Weird Colorado: your travel guide to Colorado’s local legends and best kept secrets.  This book explores ghosts and haunted places, local legends, cursed roads, crazy characters, and unusual roadside attractions found in Colorado.

…and if you’re not quite ready to leave your couch (we know the feeling), check out this documentary, The Living Dream: 100 Years of Rocky Mountain National Park on DVD to still achieve mountain views and state history!