I had never been to Colorado but I’d heard great things about it from my friend Jeremy Boles and seen countless beautiful photos from various folks I follow on Instagram, so when me and my girl had the opportunity to drive around Rocky Mountain National Park for a weekend we jumped at the chance. Audi Denver were also nice enough to lend us a new A3 (It was my favourite car to drive in Gran Turismo 2) for the weekend too! First stop out of Denver was Boulder.
I never counted, but I think the amount of people that told me to visit Boxcar Coffee Roasters in Boulder was in the millions. Everyone was totally right, It was awesome. Boxcar also happens to be in the same building as Cured, an excellent meat and cheese joint.
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It was actually getting pretty late in the day by the time we had dropped our stuff at our Airbnb (the dirt road to our cabin was called Suicide Hill…) but that did not stop us choosing one of 150 Lakes in the surrounding area to visit before the day was out.
Pro tip: Don’t go to Gold Lake, It’s private and a bummer when you drive all the way their and have to turn around. Instead, go to Red Rock Lake!
Red Rock was beautiful but the water was too high to see the actual red rocks that it gets its name from.
Our second stop for the evening was Brainard lake. It was getting late so it seemed like a good spot to stay until sun down. Those specs on the photos are bugs. Millions of mating bugs.
Good work Colorado.
I’d never seen a Moose before so spotting this huge guy grazing was pretty wild.
This was the store on our “street” that our Airbnb was on.
I don’t have much to say about these photos apart from it’s the most beautiful place I’ve visited in the US so far.
Nope, Long Horned Sheep. These 3 guys seemed to hang out for about 30 minutes and basically pose for photos the whole time.
I mean, come on!
We watched a heard of Elk play around on a pile of snow. Unfortunately I did not have the right lens on me to zoom in on the adorableness of Elk babies skipping around on a mountain side.
It’s really awesome.
© 2026 Luke Beard
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