#53 best destination in the world

Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park

High and prominent mountain 14,259-foot fourteener located in the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness
Longs Peak is the highest point in Boulder County and Rocky Mountain National Park
The mountain was named in honor of explorer Stephen Harriman Long and is featured on the Colorado state quarter

Largest cliff dwelling in North America
The structure built by the Ancestral Puebloans is located in Mesa Verde National Park in their former homeland region
Tree-ring dating indicates that construction and refurbishing of Cliff Palace was continuous approximately from 1190 CE through 1260 CE, although the major portion of the building was done within a 20 year time span
Cliff Palace was abandoned by 1300, and some believe that a series of megadroughts interrupting food production systems is the main cause

Major ski area located in Steamboat Springs, opened in 1963
The ski area has 169 named trails spread over 2,965 acres
Of those, 14% are classified as beginner-level, 42% as intermediate, and 44% as advanced
Limited trails are available for night skiing

Ski area located just outside and above the city of Aspen
Founded 76 years ago in 1946, the ski area retains a unique cultural flavor that harkens to the earlier days of recreational skiing in the state
The ski area has three restaurants on the mountain; two are on top (one of which is a club that only allows members) and one mid-mountain

Art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, with encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world
It is known for its collection of American Indian art, as well as The Petrie Institute of Western American Art, which oversees the Museum’s Western art collection
Its other collections have more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world
The Museum’s iconic Martin Building was designed in 1971

American national park that conserves an area of large sand dunes up to 750 feet tall
The park contains the tallest sand dunes in North America
Visitors must walk across the wide and shallow Medano Creek to reach the dunes in spring and summer
From July to April, it is usually no more than a few inches deep, if there is any water at all
Hiking is permitted throughout the dunes with the warning that the sand surface temperature may reach 150 °F (66 °C) in summer
Sandboarding and sandsledding are popular activities, both done on specially designed equipment that can be rented just outside the park entrance or in Alamosa

National park located in western Colorado
The park contains 12 miles of the 48-mile long Black Canyon of the Gunnison River
The national park itself contains the deepest and most dramatic section of the canyon
The canyon’s name owes itself to the fact that parts of the gorge only receive 33 minutes of sunlight a day

Museum featuring collections consisting of maps, clothing, teapots, photography dating from the 1850s, and news paper collections containing marriage, birth, and death records
Highlights include exhibits that focus on the daily lives of the Ancestral Puebloans, to an exhibit that shows what the city looked like when it was a small town in the 1800s on the Colorado plains

Adventure park located above Glenwood Springs
The park is unique because it sits at an altitude of 7,100 ft on a mountain above Glenwood Springs
Prior to 2003, only cave tours were available until a major expansion took place
For 2019, the park introduced the Glenwood Gondola that transports visitors up and down the mountain