Nick and I have been dealing with our radiator being down for over a month and a temporary heater. After a recent big snowstorm, we were tired of the cold and snow. I had stumbled across this Denver Post article and once we looked at the forecast for Pueblo (70s), we were sold on the trip.

Saturday, March 20

Nick and I hit the road and decide to check out the Royal Gorge via the Overlook Trail. It’s an easy, 1.5 mile trail with amazing Royal Gorge overlook and snow capped peak views that are hard to capture in photos. It was a beautiful day and felt so nice to be warm. There is a lot more you can do at the Royal Gorge and we saw (and heard) people ziplining or taking the gondola over the gorge. There is also a train that runs through the Gorge that looks amazing. I definitely would love to visit again and ride the train.

After Royal Gorge, we headed to Legatum Cellars. There are several wineries in the Canon City/Penrose area. We were met with extremely kind staff and a beautiful outdoor setting, as well as live music. They had a free tasting and we got to chat with the winemakers. The bottles of wine were extremely reasonably priced so we left with one.

Next, we headed to Brush Hollow Winery in Penrose and sat out on their beautiful patio, where we were the only people outside enjoying the mountain views and beautiful weather. They had an extensive free tasting with purchase that included ciders and a dessert wine. We also got a beautiful charcuterie board. We got to speak with the winemakers there as well and left with a wine bottle and growler of cider.

I continue to really enjoy Colorado wineries. They are completely unpretentious, well priced, in beautiful locations, and have great unique products. Often they are family-run or tight knit and you speak with the winemakers. One thing we learned is that a big freeze killed a lot of Colorado grape plants, so sourcing local grapes will be a struggle for the next several years. Plus, fires in Palisade and California will make grape sourcing challenging. See this article for more information. Ways to help: Sign up for CSAs or Growhaus, which I use. Plan a road trip to Colorado’s fruit-growing regions and buy directly from them; see my Paonia Orchard and Wineries and Palisade Winery Bike Tour posts for ideas.

We headed to Pueblo next, where I had a free Marriott stay. We walked to the Riverwalk, which is a beautiful area to walk around with restaurants and bars. One restaurant had some excellent live music.

All the restaurants had a long wait, so we enjoyed drinks at a bar overlooking the river before deciding to order takeout sushi and sit at one of the many tables around the river. After that, we headed to The Clink Lounge for a fancy cocktail. This hotel and bar is in a former jail. The patio was lovely and the cocktails were so good.

After that, the one must-do I had on my list after reading the Denver Post article was to visit Neon Alley. We walked through the quiet historic downtown and then came upon the first lights. This is a collection of vintage neon signs turned public art installation, and it is so much fun to see.

We heard people commenting that there were new signs since their last visit, and I have read that the collectors keep adding more signs. There are also some really fun vintage posters in the alley. If you go, be careful because it is definitely a real alley that cars drive through.

This was a long day so we headed back to relax in the hotel room for the night.

Sunday, March 21

The next morning, the weather appeared nice, sunny, and 55, but it was quite windy out. We headed over to B Street Cafe. It was nice enough to sit outside this diner-style restaurant and we enjoyed an awesome breakfast across from the historic train station. There are a lot of preserved historic buildings in Pueblo that we enjoyed check out downtown before heading to the car. We stopped at Solar Roast Coffee before heading out, as the wind continued to pick up.

Overall, this was a really fun, mostly warm weekend. It is an underrated part of Colorado, in my opinion, and I really enjoyed how friendly everyone was and it was not as overcrowded as some other areas of Colorado. Spring is a really tough time in the Front Range of Colorado, when we are all getting tired of snow and mud season makes hiking unpleasant and/or impossible. I think we will definitely repeat this trip in future years around this time of year.