5 Best Colorado Scenic Drives!

Colorado is world famous for its beautiful mountains and we've visited this state several times driving many of its highest and most incredible roads. Come join us as we cover our top five most scenic mile-high drives in the great state of Colorado. These drives are in no particular order but we've saved our favorite for last. Let's kick things off with the Old Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. Last year was my first time visiting and I was super excited to check this road out. We were there at the beginning of July and to our shock the road was actually closed. I couldn't believe that it had been summer in Utah for several weeks but in Colorado that was not the case. We kind of watched and waited and finally on the 4th of July the road opened and what was super special about this was that there were quite a few crowds but it was not bad crowds it was fun crowds because you could tell these were Colorado locals that were super excited to be exploring the first big tourist road in Rocky Mountain National Park and it was great. This is just a one-way dirt road as you head up the mountain there's switchbacks, there's waterfalls, some of the turns are pretty tight and it was pretty exciting. Unlike the trail ridge road which quickly gets up on top of the mountains before riding the ridge, the Old Fall River Road is a slow dirt road that steadily climbs up the valley. This provides amazing views of the waterfalls cascading down the mountains. I especially loved at the end of the drive when it rises out of the trees and looks back at the valley that we just drove through. Next up is Independence Pass. Matt loves to go on scenic drives and sometimes I love them and sometimes I don't and I was a bit skeptical about this one but I have to tell you Independence Pass completely blew me away. One of the things I loved so much about it was the grotto. It's just this amazing little stop where you can see a very cool waterfall and I think I found the world's most perfect picnic spot. It's just a single table right by where the waterfall is cascading over the rocks. I loved it. One other really cool thing about it were the ice caves. If you're feeling adventurous you can go into these cool ice caves and explore them but we didn't have time to do that so what we did is we hopped back in our car and kept going up Independence Drive and off to the side of the road we saw the old ghost town of Independence and there was literally nobody there. We got out, we walked down to these old wood buildings and when I looked up I could just see the jagged peaks of Colorado mountains and I was just in awe. It was very cool to be in the middle of this old west ghost town. Miners struck gold here on July 4th 1879. As a result they named their new town Independence. Like all other mining towns it eventually went bust but about a hundred people remained when a huge snowstorm hit one winter trapping the remaining residents. So what did they do? They took some sighting from their houses, turned them into skis and skied out of the valley down into Aspen never to return again. We stopped at this cool little ghost town, Independence ghost town that is in an amazing gorgeous valley here. That's always a good rule of thumb is to stop at ghost towns really for the scenery. They are located in some really scenic spots. The real draw of this ghost town is to be in this river valley with the Roaring Forks River. It's just so scenic, so beautiful and so remote. You get this place to yourself. This road reminded me a little bit of the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park because it has one big switchback and then a steady climb all the way to the top. The top of the pass was really cool. There's a lake and a little nature walk where we saw some tundra flowers. The surrounding mountain peaks are Colorado's tallest peaks. Most of them are over 14,000 feet in elevation. This is also why this road is called the Top of the Rockies Scenic Byway. Okay, up next is the Million Dollar Highway in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. This was my first experience with a Colorado Scenic Drive and I really could not believe how stunningly beautiful Colorado was. I've always been super proud of our Utah mountains but I have to admit that when I drove the Million Dollar Highway, I could not believe how big their mountains were and I felt like Utah was Colorado Jr. Now, I still believe that Utah has some of the most beautiful drives out there and in fact, we have a whole other video about this for you to check out and see what you think after this video but oh my gosh, I could not believe how fantastically beautiful these Colorado mountains were. It was just like a picture in a book. I couldn't believe they were actually real. We did this road before we were YouTubers so this is a really fun little trip down memory lane for us. My memory of this road is that we were on a big road trip with our family including my parents and we were in our hotel in Cortez, Colorado looking for a place to stay the next night in a little town called Ouray. This was only 10 years ago but at that time you could still wing it with hotels. Anyway, we picked up a brochure for a hotel that looked so ridiculously picture perfect that I actually laughed at it and told my dad there's no way it actually looks like that but the hotel had vacancies so we booked it. We drove the road and we were blown away. This road shows off the best of the San Juan mountains in Colorado. The switchbacks were my favorite part. When we arrived in Ouray, we learned that they call themselves the Switzerland of America and holy cow, it was the prettiest mountain town we've ever seen and probably still is. When I checked into the hotel, it was actually as wonderful as the brochure showed. I thought we'd be back next year for sure but we haven't made it back since. Next is the Trail Ridge Road. Now if you don't know much about the Trail Ridge Road, it's a paved road that goes through Rocky Mountain National Park that connects Estes Park to Grand Lake and climbs to heights of over 12,000 feet. There are several viewpoints along the way but what really surprised me was the very first one. Many parks curve is only at 9,000 feet elevation but you can still see everything. When you look down, you can see Estes Park and when you look up, you can see the mountain peaks. It's so cool to have a great view of both. Then you keep heading up the road and every viewpoint seriously gets more and more beautiful but I have to say my very favorite stop is Forest Canyon. What I liked so much about it was that it's not necessarily the mountain views but when I look down, I saw these tiny little tundra flowers. I mean they are so tiny, they are so delicate but they're so hearty. It's windy and cold above 10,000 feet but these little flowers continue to grow. I found myself instead of looking over the edge of the mountains at the views, I just wanted to keep looking for more tundra flowers. One totally crazy thing that happened to us was that on the way up the mountain, we got hammered with a hail storm. This was so rough that the hail was literally falling vertically because the winds were so strong. It was painful to stay outside while this was going on so we high-tailed it to our car. Honestly, it was sunny when we left Estes Park that morning and it was sunny when we got back that afternoon but those mountain storms in the middle of the day are legit. We finally reached the Alpine Visitor Center at the top of the Trail Ridge Road. I thought the cafe at Trail Ridge was super neat because it's not a big expensive restaurant where you have to get reservations and pay a bunch of money. It's a restaurant where you can just walk up, get a bowl of super hot chocolate, and then warm up while you sit by the big windows and look at the views below. I mean holy smokes, talk about the best view for the cheapest price in the national parks. It just blew me away. I remember eating in that restaurant the first time I drove this road. I was in Denver for work and I was all by myself one weekend while my family was at home so I ran out of car and drove the Trail Ridge Road. I also thought seeing the mountainside covered in tundra was really really memorable and I also remember thinking that the road was quite deceiving because it didn't look that dangerous but if you weren't paying attention and you drove off the road you'd never stop rolling. One of the most unusual things about the Trail Ridge Road is how it rides along the top of the mountain ridge for so long. Most mountain roads go up and over the pass then down but the Trail Ridge just rides the ridge for about 11 miles so they call it the highest continuously paved road in the country. However, it is not the highest road. Up next is the drive we enjoyed most but make sure to stick around after because we have a unique and underrated bonus drive for you at the end. Our number one drive in Colorado is also the highest paved road in America. It has a peak that reaches over 14,000 feet and is only 60 miles from Denver. It is the Mount Blue Sky Scenic Byway. This is a beautiful road with no barriers on the sides. At times it literally feels like you are driving to the sky. You hit the tree line pretty early so there's no trees growing and so it's really easy to see over the edge with the incredible views. Lots of beautiful granite rocks, views of mountains that last forever, and fat marmots are on this trail. You will also see some pretty bold mountain goats that climb wherever they want. Along the way we saw these mysterious potholes covering the ground filled with icy water. We decided to pull over and check it out and I'm so glad we did. These holes reminded me of the dead marshes from Lord of the Rings. I also saw some cool lakes that looked like they'd been formed by glaciers but when I got home and looked it up they're actually called Glacial Surts. These are bowl-shaped amphitheater-like depressions that glaciers carve into mountains and valley sidewalls. This area is called Summit Lake and we think it's totally worth it. It was only five dollars and it only took us 45 minutes of extra time to explore. As we got back on the road we loved watching this mile signs count down as we reached the top. When we finally got to the top I could not believe all the snow that we saw. My oldest two sons and I decided to hike to the top. It was kind of steep, it was a short hike and I was shocked at how the elevation affected us. At 14,000 feet it does kind of take your breath away and we felt a bit light-headed but we kept pushing on. We finally got to the peak and I could not believe the outstanding views. It really was probably one of the best views I have ever seen in my life. We could see down to Summit Lake that we had just explored. We could see the valleys below, other mountain peaks and it was such a special moment to share with my sons. The mountain sheep at the top also gave us a little chuckle. There used to be a building here called Castle in the Sky but now it's mostly ruins and these mountain sheep love to climb in and out of the doors and windows and even along the walls. These mountain sheep are nuts. When we drove this road it was called Mount Evans but just a few months later in September of 2023 they changed the name to Mount Blue Sky. Although I think the Trail Ridge Road and the Million Dollar Drive are probably better roads overall, Mount Blue Sky had that cool experience of climbing to the top of a peak. In fact it is one of two 14,000 foot peaks that you can drive to in Colorado. The other is Pikes Peak which would surely be on this list but we haven't done it yet. Okay now time for our bonus drive which does not look at all like the rest of these roads. We're talking about Colorado National Monument located in Grand Junction Colorado. This drive goes through some crazy red rock formations with steep sheer drops making it among the scariest drives on this list for some people. If you're thinking it looks more like Utah than Colorado that's because it's very close to the Red Rock of Southern Utah and if you want to see some of the best drives in Utah click the video icon on your screen. Thanks for watching!