Colorado is Spanish for ‘coloured red’, but as one of the State’s former governors said: “That clearly does not give justice to the yellows of the aspen, the green of the conifers, or the blue of the horizon.”
In fact, the carpet of wildflowers that covers the lush hills as far as the eye can see, contains every colour imaginable. This is set against a backdrop of a sky so blue they call it ‘picture blue’ because it looks like the fake colours of an old seaside postcard.
The diversity of Colorado’s landscape never ceases to amaze:from snowcapped peaks and the green hills of Crested Butte to the desert terrain of the Great Sand Dunes, all in one day.
The remote Brown’s Park in the northwest of the state was a favourite hiding place for outlaw Butch Cassidy and western greats like How the West Was Won and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were filmed here.
In Durango, the spirit of the old West lives on. In a quirky little bar called the Diamond Belle in the Victorian Strater Hotel, clients are served by barmaids dressed in original showgirl costumes while a pianist plays rag-time classics in the corner. All that was missing was for some outlaw cowboy to come flying through the saloon doors guns blazing to settle a score.
We were in the company of genuine cowboys and girls, complete with their hats, jeans and cowboy boots (they really do wear them).
Many of them were preparing for the evening’s Pro-Rodeo event, where they get the opportunity to show off their riding skills twice weekly throughout the summer to friends and tourists with displays of bare-back riding, bull-riding and barrel racing.
Where there are cowboys there are always Indians, and you can find out more about them by visiting Mesa Verde National Park. Awalk along cliff-edge trails brings you to the awe-inspiring sight of the Anasazi Indian Kivas – a collection of small circular stone buildings dating back hundreds of years. Excavations have failed to reveal the purpose of the buildings but it is estimated that around 4,000 Anasazi Indians lived there between 600 and 1300 AD. The Indians abandoned them suddenly and left behind nothing but a mystery.
Halfway between Crested Butte and the Great Sand Dunes, we stumbled upon a ghost town.
There are around 30 in Colorado, relics from the Gold Rush days when the slightest rumour of gold would bring a flood of young men hoping to make their fortune in the mines.
This particular town had been dead for so long that it was no longer marked on any maps and no longer had a name. The dust blew through the empty street lined with boarded-up shops and houses. A door swung open and shut in the wind and in a nearby cafe there were salt-and-pepper shakers and ketchup bottles on the tables.
At dusk we headed for the Colorado National Monument – a 20,000 acre landscape of towering rock spires and 11 majestic canyons. I watched the sun set over a huge forest fire far in the distance – the colours were truly spectacular and the smoke made the sun look an eerie shade of red in the descending darkness.
As one of our tour guides remarked as we were driving up a winding path through the mountains: “I reckon that this is as close to heaven as we’re ever gonna get.”