Day 1 / Arrive in Golden
Welcome Party and Registration 1:00 - 4:00 pm
Tour Mathews Collection and Shop

Day 2 / First Day of Driving
Golden to Steamboat Springs
Departing Golden we will first travel through Golden Gate Canyon then Rollinsville, Nederland and Ward. The town of Ward is a former mining settlement founded in 1860 in the wake of the discovery of gold at nearby Gold Hill and was once one of the richest towns in the state during the Colorado Gold Rush.

Next we’ll reach Estes Park, which is a popular summer resort town and headquarters for Rocky Mountain National Park. The town’s outskirts include The Stanley Hotel. Once a fine example of Edwardian opulence, the 1906 building had Stephen King as a guest, inspiring him to change the locale for his novel The Shining from an amusement park to the Stanley’s fictional stand-in the Overlook Hotel. Enjoy the beautiful drive through The Rocky Mountain National Park and over Trail Ridge Road, the highest paved continuous highway in the United States. It reaches a maximum elevation of 12,183 feet near Fall River Pass (11,796 ft). At the top is a popular visitor’s center and a lookout point. Up 100+ steps is a sign where you have gone as high as you can go there. It is over 12,000 feet above sea level.

Just over the continental divide we’ll come to our lunch stop in the town of Grand Lake. Grand Lake is the largest natural lake in the state of Colorado, formed by the damming of several streams by a glacial moraine. It forms a continuous body of water with the artificial Shadow Mountain Lake, which then flows into Lake Granby. The lake itself is part of the Colorado-Big Thompson Project which diverts water east under the Continental Divide via the Alva B. Adams Tunnel to the Big Thompson River on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. From here, the water flows into the South Platte River and is used for agriculture, human consumption, and industry. This is the first of many large-scale diversions of water from the Colorado River Basin between Colorado and the Gulf of California. After lunch we’ll follow Grand Lake as it flows into Lake Granby ,then through Hot Sulphur Springs before entering Byers Canyon, a short gorge on the upper Colorado River which is approximately 8 miles long.

We’ll pass through the towns of Parshall and Kremmling before driving over Gore Pass (9527 ft) which furnishes a motor vehicle route between Middle Park and the valley of the Yampa River to the west. After Toponas take notice of Finger Rock, an impressive volcanic neck. Necks are the exposed and eroded remnants of the solidified magma tube that fed a volcanic vent; the “fossilized plumbing system” of an ancient volcano. Finger Rock is dated to be 7-10 million years old. You’ll then pass through Yampa, Phippsburg and Oak Creek before arriving in Steamboat Springs for our first night stay.

Day 3 / Second Day of Driving
Steamboat Springs to Steamboat Springs
Today’s loop provides an opportunity to stay in Steamboat for a day of shopping and relaxation or to take a beautiful drive through Wyoming and over Snowy Range Road.
­Leaving Steamboat Springs we’ll head over Rabbit Ears Pass (9426 ft), which is named for nearby Rabbit Ears Peak, a mountain in Park Range to the north that is prominently visible from the east side of the pass. Looking from the southwest, the viewer may wonder what sort of vivid imagination is required to derive the name Rabbit Ears from this formation. This remains perplexing until Rabbit Ears Peak is viewed from the southeast. A proper vantage point shows that the easternmost pillar is itself split. The narrow cut extends about halfway down the pillar, giving the appearance of a pair of lengthy, narrow, almost touching ears attached to the head of a huge rabbit peeking over the brow of the hill. These ears can be seen from the middle of North Park all the way south to near Kremmling. Rabbit Ears Pass is significantly steeper on the western side than the eastern side so keep that in mind as we travel over the pass twice today. Look for the ears on your drive.

North Park basin opens out northward into Wyoming, in the direction of the flow of the North Platte River. On the east side, it is rimmed by the Medicine Bow Mountains, and the south and west by the spine of the Rockies along the continental divide. A nice stretch of Colorado Highway 14 takes us into Walden, the Jackson?County seat and “Moose Viewing Capital of Colorado”. Then through the town of Cowdrey before crossing the Wyoming border and through Mountain Home and Woods Landing. The next town in?Wyoming is Laramie, home to the University of Wyoming, Wyoming Technical Institute and a branch of Laramie County Community College. In 2004, Laramie became the first city in Wyoming to prohibit smoking in enclosed workplaces, including bars, restaurants and private clubs.

Wyoming Highway 130 is known locally as the Snowy Range Road. It makes it’s way west from Laramie across the plains, and rises over the Medicine Bow Mountains. We’ll stop in Centennial for lunch at the base of the mountains. The stretch of road over the mountains is Wyoming’s only National Scenic Byway and provides many photo opportunities. We’ll hit Riverside and then make our way towards the Colorado line and retrace our route back to Steamboat Springs.

Day 4 / Third Day of Driving
Steamboat Springs to Aspen
Colorado has a rich mining heritage, beginning with the discovery of gold in 1859, and the industry in this mineral rich state continues to evolve, with the discovery and development of new reserves. Colorado’s present day industry is a modern, innovative, safe and environmentally responsible citizen that extracts a wide variety of minerals from the earth valued at more than $1 billion. When both the direct and indirect benefits of mining are considered, the industry in Colorado contributes about $8 billion to the state’s economy. Today’s drive will take us through some popular mining areas.

We’ll start the morning with a drive down Twenty Mile Road which takes us by the Twentymile Mine, about 30 miles from Steamboat Springs. Two-thirds of Colorado’s coal production comes from extremely productive longwall underground mining operations. In June, 1997, The Twentymile Mine broke the world record for single month production, becoming the first operator to produce more than 1 million tons (1,001,401) from a single longwall system. Twentymile is serviced by the Union Pacific Railroad, which runs two or three 10,000t-capacity unit trains per day from the mine.

We’ll travel through Hayden and head south from Craig, the commercial and industrial center of northwest Colorado. Besides the several coal mining operations located within a short distance of the city, the largest power generation plant in Colorado is six miles south of Craig. Next we’ll travel through Hamilton and Meeker, and before stopping for lunch in Rifle, we’ll take a loop through Colorado’s Piceance Creek Basin which is home to the only pure sodium bicarbonate (nahcolite) deposits in the United States.

After lunch we’ll head east on I-70, exiting at Glenwood Springs. Glenwood has a long, interesting history. Its unique location at the confluence of the Colorado River and the Roaring Fork River, as well as gaining a stop on the railroad, historically made it a center of commerce in the area. The city has seen numerous famous visitors including President Teddy Roosevelt who spent an entire summer vacation living out of the historic Hotel Colorado. Doc Holliday, a wild west legend from the O.K. Coral gunfight, spent the final months of his life in Glenwood Springs and is buried in the town’s original cemetery above Bennett Avenue. The largest natural hot springs pool in the world sits right beside the highway. Visitors can soak in the therapy pool (104 degrees) or swim in the huge 98 degree swimming pool or play in the small kids pool. The water is full of salty minerals. The Hot Springs Pool is the marque attraction in Glenwood Springs. From Glenwood we’ll follow Highway 82 to Aspen for a fabulous evening at the St. Regis.

Day 5 / Final Day of Driving
Aspen to Golden
Today is our last day of driving and we’ll start the morning heading out of town over Independence Pass (12,095 ft.). The pass is the nation’s highest passenger car crossing of the Continental Divide. The top of the pass is well above the tree line and its narrow road provides for slow cautious navigation on its approaches. The pass was not recognized as an important route until the mining boom of the 1870s. It is said that gold was discovered on Independence Day, July 4, 1879, just four miles west of the pass. The town that began there became known as Independence, and the inhabitants of the valley began calling the pass Independence Pass.

On the other side of the pass we’ll pass through the Twin Lakes National Historic District and Malta before reaching the town of Leadville, a former silver mining camp. It’s elevation (10,152 ft) makes it the highest city in North America. Next we’ll enter the San Isabel National Forest and travel over Tennessee Pass (10,424 ft) and through Minturn before getting on I-70 for a stretch through Vail, over Vail Pass (10,603 ft) and past Copper Mountain before exiting at Frisco. We’ll stop in Breckenridge for lunch. After lunch we’ll retrace our steps towards Frisco, but exit for a drive over Swan Mountain, through White River National Forest. Then past Keystone and Arapahoe Basin ski resorts before our last pass over the Continental Divide, Loveland Pass (11,990 ft).

Back on I-70 you’ll pass Georgetown. The discovery of gold in Clear Creek valley lead to the birth of Georgetown in 1859 and before Leadville boomed in 1878, it was the principal silver producer in the state. A narrow-gauge railroad reached Georgetown in 1877, but extension of the line up the valley to Silver Plume presented a difficult problem. The elevation gain was over 600 feet in the two-mile distance to Silver Plume, resulting in a 6% grade – too steep for a locomotive. This problem was solved by the construction of the Georgetown Loop. The loop lengthened the distance between the two cities but held the grade to 3%. It became a major tourist attraction in its day and has been partially restored. We’ll leave I-70 at Exit #244 (Highway 6) which will take us through the canyon and back to Golden with plenty of time to relax before the banquet.