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Colorado National Monument is located near Utah border in Colorado. It took around 4 hours to drive there from the hotel we stayed in.

The environmental change we observed, is amazing while we were approaching Utah border. It was so cool and greenish around Denver and it became really dry and reddish as we proceed. We passed red colored hills made by only rocks and sands. The sights were really beautiful and interesting.

Finally we entered the park and took Rim Rock drive which is a scenic drive in Colorado national monument. It is easy to post some pictures than describing the beauty of the scenery.

Then we drove back to Denver and spent the night there hoping to fly back home next day.
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Seven Falls is located in Colorado Springs, CO. It is kind of a tall waterfall formed by seven other small falls.

This is beautiful at night because they have flash lights in different colors for seven water falls. We went there in the evening but left before it gets much dark. So we couldn't see the real beauty of it.

We had plans to stay the night in Colorado Springs but changed the plan as we wanted to visit Colorado National Monument next day. So we booked a hotel (Quality inn) in Silverthorne and drove there.

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It was around 8.30 am when we leave Estes park. First we visited a friend of ours in Colorado State University. We had lunch there and then drove to Colorado Springs to visit Garden of the Gods. It is a park full of unusually formed red colored stones.

The scenery was beautiful under the reddish rays of sinking sun.

 

There were hiking trails too. However we just drove around the park and left it soon as we were planning to see Seven Falls in Colorado Springs too.
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Our main target of Colorado trip was Rocky mountains national park. We searched the park's web site and decided to drive on some scenic byways like Trailridge road and Old fall river road in the park.

While driving from Denver to Rockies, we chose a scenic byway named peak to peak byway.  It was really a nice byway and we could experience lots of scenery  of snow covered blue mountains on the way.

 This is the map of our route from Denver to Rockies.



View Larger Map


We arrived in Estes park around noon and got to know that both Trailridge and Oldfall river byways are closed until Memorial day (27th May). This is a fact to remember if you are visiting Rockies before memorial day.

So we had lunch from Estes park and then visited Bear lake, which is another beautiful location in Rocky mountains park.
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In mid of May 2013, we visited Colorado, mainly Rocky mountains. We had to fly from Indianapolis to Denver as the trip takes like two days to drive. 

We flew with Frontier Airlines and it should get a credit for their on time departures. I have really bad experiences with American Airlines on this subject before. So we arrived in Denver International airport 9 pm and took the shuttle to Hertz rental to get the car we had reserved. It was around 11 pm when we get to the hotel (Hawthorn Suites) we had reserved for the night.

To mention a word about the hotel, the suit was clean and nice, worth for the price. It provides breakfast but only grab and go kinda thing.

So we got a good sleep and headed Rocky mountains next day. 
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