36 Hours in Colorado Springs (2024)

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• Garden of the Gods is a city park filled with fantastical red sandstone formations, an informative visitor center and 21 miles of hiking and biking trails.
• U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum celebrates American athletes with interactive exhibits for each Olympic and Paralympic sport and high-tech displays.
• The Broadmoor Manitou and Pikes Peak Cog Railway takes riders to the top of 14,115-foot Pikes Peak and back down, including a stop at the Summit Visitor Center for high-altitude doughnuts.

• AdAmAn Alley is a downtown walkway with murals, sculpture and an LED installation, all created to commemorate the 2022 centennial of a local mountaineering club.
• Old Colorado City was the first town in the Pikes Peak area, established in 1859 as a supply hub, and today is a neighborhood of historic buildings, galleries and shops.
• Manitou Springs has eight mineral-springs drinking fountains that dispense naturally carbonated water said to have healing properties.
• North Cheyenne Cañon Park is a 1,600-acre city park in southwest Colorado Springs with 26 miles of trails, including one up Mount Cutler.

• Lumen8 is a rooftop restaurant and bar downtown with local beer on tap and a stellar view of Pikes Peak.
• Four by Brother Luck, whose owner has appeared on “Top Chef,” offers creative Southwestern-inspired small plates and entrees.
• Ivywild School is a food hall with a variety of counters, a bar, a distillery and a brewery, all within a former elementary school built in 1916.
• Inefable serves traditional Mexican food enhanced by French, Spanish and South American influences in a low-key dining room.
• Golden Bee is an authentic 19th-century English pub, shipped over and rebuilt at the Broadmoor Resort in 1961, with nightly singalongs led by a pianist.
• Story Coffee is a locally owned cafe and roastery with a location in Old Colorado City as well as in a tiny house at downtown’s Acacia Park.
• Adam’s Mountain Cafe is an almost 40-year-old restaurant in Manitou Springs that is beloved for its hearty breakfasts.

• Cronk Art and Curiosities sells taxidermied insects, tarantulas (live), tarot cards and other eclectic goods.
• Novis Mortem Collective offers natural art like insect specimens, taxidermied birds and butterfly dioramas in glass domes.
• Cacao Chemistry makes a delicious variety of truffles and bars and carries chocolate from other artisanal brands.
• Ladyfingers Letterpress prints offbeat greeting cards and stationery in house and stocks gifts, too.
• Poor Richard’s is an independent bookstore that has served the city for almost 50 years and includes an adjacent coffee shop and casual restaurant.

• The Garden of the Gods Resort and Club, established in 1949 as a private facility and opened to the public in 2013, unveiled a $40 million renovation last year that included updates to its restaurant. It also refreshed the sleek and spacious rooms in the main lodge, which all have patios or balconies overlooking the Garden of the Gods park and the Rocky Mountains beyond. Amenities include golf, tennis, swimming, an on-site adventure outfitter and an excellent spa and a concierge medical center. Rooms in summer start at $600.
• The Mining Exchange, a boutique hotel that is also newly renovated, occupies a 1902 building downtown that served as a stock exchange for miners. Rooms include historic brick accents and the hotel recently added a new lobby bar and coffee shop. Rooms start at $300.
• Kinship Landing, one of a new breed of hotels aimed at adventure-oriented travelers, opened downtown in 2021. It offers some rooms with garage-style roller doors that open to the outside, an eight-bed private bunkroom and even a scenic deck for urban camping (bring your own tent). Rooms start at $150.
• For short-term rentals, look in Old Colorado City, a historic neighborhood near Garden of the Gods park, where you can easily walk to restaurants and galleries. Downtown Colorado Springs is less than three miles away.

• The most efficient way to get around is by car. PikeRide, an electric bike-share program, has 60-plus hubs in and around Colorado Springs ($1 to unlock a bike, then 25 cents per minute, or $30 for a four-hour pass). Mountain Metro runs the public bus service, including a free shuttle around downtown.

3 p.m. Hike up a mountain and see a waterfall

A dramatic view of Colorado Springs, framed by rough-hewn cliffs, comes early in a 2.2-mile roundtrip hike up Mount Cutler in North Cheyenne Cañon Park. The popular city park added seven miles of new trails three years ago, but this classic route never gets too steep and has a big payoff. From the summit, inhale fragrant juniper, piñon and ponderosa pine while viewing the sparkling tiers of the Seven Falls waterfall far below in South Cheyenne Cañon and the forested slopes of the Pike National Forest rolling westward. From nearby Cheyenne Mountain, you may hear the chimes coming from the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun, a granite tower with a viewing deck overlooking the city. You’d never guess from this vantage point that a large military complex, built during the Cold War, still operates 2,000 feet deep within the mountain.

6 p.m. Gaze from a rooftop, then graze through Southwestern dishes

At Lumen8, a rooftop restaurant and bar that opened downtown in 2022, post up by a fire pit, sip one of seven local brews on tap (from $6) and gaze at the majestic, snow-capped Pikes Peak. Then head up the street to the low-lit dining room at Four by Brother Luck, where its chef and owner, Brother Luck, who appeared on “Top Chef,” offers Southwestern-inspired dishes like sweet-and-savory blue cornbread accompanied with wojapi (a thick berry sauce traditional in Lakota cuisine), charred octopus in mango broth with tangy Peruvian peppers, and a fun dessert called the Forest Floor with sweet elements styled as edible “flora.” Dishes are a la carte, or four courses for $75.

Ivywild School is a food hall with a variety of counters, a bar, a distillery and a brewery, all within a former elementary school built in 1916.

9 a.m. Hike a fantastical red rock garden

At Garden of the Gods, one of the country’s most unusual city parks and a designated National Natural Landmark, 300 million years of erosion have shaped the red sandstone into fantastical formations — with names like the Kissing Camels, Siamese Twins and Balanced Rock — that strikingly contrast the often vivid-blue sky. Stop first at the visitor center, which is chock-full of exhibits about the park’s geology, history, and flora and fauna (a species of dinosaur was even discovered there). Then explore some of the short, interconnected hiking trails that allow you to view the striated, pitted rock up close, starting with the 1.5-mile paved Perkins Central Garden loop (a free shuttle provides access to the trailhead through the third week of August). Or see the park on horseback (from $100), bike (rentals, from $40, available at the visitor center) or by car. Free entry.

12 p.m. Have a beer in school

It’s perfectly legit to drink at Ivywild School, a former elementary school turned food hall, where the well-worn wood floors creak underfoot and the entryway sign is written on a blackboard. The school was built in 1916 and decommissioned in 2009; now, instead of rows of small desks, former classrooms house a variety of food counters and bars, as well as a whiskey distillery and an eclectic gift shop. Try Bristol Brewing Company’s pub for its signature Laughing Lab Scottish ale ($6.50 for a pint); Ivywild Kitchen for a spicy, buttermilk-brined chicken sandwich ($11.95), washed down with house-made nonalcoholic ginger beer ($4) from the Principal’s Office; and Gold Star Bakery for a splurgy but delectable slice of salted maple pie ($7).

1:30 p.m. Get amped for Paris 2024

With the Paris Summer Olympics around the corner, stoke the fervor for amazing athletic feats and tear-jerking gold-medal moments at the excellent U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum (entry $19.95), open since 2020. (Colorado Springs has been home to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee since 1978, and has a major training center.) The building’s striking exterior — which features thousands of aluminum panels shimmering in the sunlight — hints at the high-tech displays inside, including virtual sport simulators (try archery!) and other interactive exhibits for each sport. A gallery of Olympic torches, from 1936 to the present, contains inspiring video footage from the torch relays. One of the most moving exhibits focuses on the 11 Israeli athletes taken hostage at the 1972 Munich Games, and includes the ABC sports announcer Jim McKay’s somber broadcast of their fate.

4:30 p.m. See street art, then shop for chocolate and tarantulas

Colorado Springs is showing more of its artsy side these days, even in the heart of downtown. From the museum, stroll a few blocks to AdAmAn Alley, a walkway where murals, sculpture and an LED installation commemorate the 2022 centennial of a local mountaineering club, AdAmAn, that climbs Pikes Peak each New Year’s Eve to set off fireworks. Need a live tarantula, taxidermied butterfly or deck of tarot cards? Find these, and mystical treasures, at Cronk Art and Curiosities (the nearby Novis Mortem Collective also offers taxidermy as art). Indulge a sweet tooth with a whiskey-and-cherry-cordial truffle at Cacao Chemistry, then duck into Ladyfingers Letterpress, where the on-site press produces sassy cards (“Don’t forget me when your start-up goes public”), and Poor Richard’s, an indie bookstore that’s served local literature lovers for almost 50 years.

7 p.m. Wake up your taste buds

The low-key décor lets the food shine at new restaurant Inefable above the just-renovated Avenue 19 food hall, where the chef and owner Fernando Trancoso boosts traditional Mexican dishes with French, Spanish and South American influences. Bright flavors meld nicely in a slightly spicy tropical fruit gazpacho (pineapple, passion fruit, lemon and cucumber) with poached shrimp ($16), while a pumpkin-seed green mole adds a twist to a traditional duck confit ($39). A recent nightly special featured cochinita pibil ($42), a Yucatán-style slow-roasted, fall-off-the-bone pork shank that’s been marinated overnight in a sauce with Maya spices, red chiles and achiote (a slightly peppery spice). The co*cktail menu reflects Mr. Trancoso’s Mexican roots with almost three dozen varieties of tequila and mezcal.

9:30 p.m. Sing your heart out in a real English pub

It’s a little corny, sure, but belting out tunes like “Sweet Caroline” or “Piano Man” during the nightly singalongs at the Golden Bee, a pub within the venerable Broadmoor resort on the city’s west side, is also a lot of fun, in a seventh-inning stretch at the baseball game kind of way. The bar is a 19th-century English pub that was shipped over and reassembled in this space in 1961, ornate woodwork and all. Everybody gets a songbook, and the piano player leads the program (and takes requests). Order a pint ($10) or a half-yard ($28) of Extra Special Bee, an English-style pale ale from the local brewery Red Leg, to wet your whistle.

North Cheyenne Cañon Park has 26 miles of trails, including one up Mount Cutler.

8 a.m. Take a historic thoroughfare to breakfast and mineral springs

Have breakfast in Manitou Springs, a quirky enclave at the base of Pikes Peak — but instead of taking Highway 24, take a more interesting detour by driving Colorado Avenue west through the Old Colorado City neighborhood. The area was once its own town, established in 1859 as a supply hub. Today, several blocks are lined with historic buildings, galleries and shops, such as Story Coffee, a small cafe and roastery. Continue driving west to the homey Adam’s Mountain Cafe, an almost 40-year-old favorite for hearty meals like orange-almond French toast ($12) or shrimp and grits ($18). Then stop by one of the town’s eight mineral-springs fountains for a swig of naturally carbonated, slightly metallic-tasting water (each spring has a different “flavor”); the Native Americans who first lived here attributed healing properties to the water.

10:30 a.m. Eat doughnuts at 14,000 feet

Take the world’s highest cog railway to the summit of Pikes Peak (from $59 per person for the three-and-a-half-hour round trip). Reopened in 2021 after a $100 million, four-year overhaul, the train is the easiest way to ascend the mountain that inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write “America the Beautiful” (there’s also a 19-mile toll road and hiking trails up). You’ll ride past cascading streams, the ruins of the Halfway House Hotel and perhaps a few bighorn sheep. At the spacious Summit Visitor Center, recently rebuilt with an energy-efficient modern design, don’t miss the doughnuts (from $2.99 for two); a beloved tradition since 1916, they’re baked from a recipe that only works well above 14,000 feet. Munching on a cinnamon-sugar doughnut amid 360-degree views of mountains and plains may inspire you to pen your own tribute.