Weird day trips from Denver

The strangest Denver finds are often a short drive out. These 46 day trips — Castlewood Canyon Lucas Homestead Ruins, Edgar Experimental Mine, Georgetown Energy Museum and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.

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Castlewood Canyon Lucas Homestead Ruins Most people drive out to Castlewood Canyon for the collapsed-dam ruins, never realizing a second, weirder rui… Franktown (Douglas County)
Edgar Experimental Mine This isn't a tourist gold mine with fake gunfights — it's the Colorado School of Mines' actual working resear… Idaho Springs
Georgetown Energy Museum Tucked at the end of a Georgetown side street sits a hydroelectric plant that's been spinning since 1900 and… Georgetown
Hamill House Museum Everyone photographs the silver baron's restored Victorian mansion; almost no one clocks the real story out b… Georgetown
Bread Bar Take Exit 226 off I-70, one of the corridor's most-ignored, and you land in Silver Plume, population ~200, wh… Silver Plume
Scileppi's at the Old Stone Church Scileppi's is a family-owned Italian restaurant operating since 2018 inside an 1888 rhyolite-stone Catholic c… Castle Rock
B&B Cafe The B&B Cafe has anchored downtown Castle Rock since 1946, and two bullet holes — one in the pressed-tin ceil… Castle Rock
Provision Provision is a genuine 1920s-speakeasy-style craft cocktail bar on Castle Rock's historic Wilcox Street block… Castle Rock
Palmer Lake Star Hand-built by volunteers in 1935 to lift Depression-era spirits, the Palmer Lake Star is a 457-foot-wide, fiv… Palmer Lake
Castlewood Canyon Dam Ruins The crumbling concrete shell of the 1890 Castlewood Dam still stands in two massive broken halves, the gap be… Franktown
Cantril School House This 1897 Roman-arched stone schoolhouse — a National Register of Historic Places landmark purchased by the T… Castle Rock
The Estemere The Estemere is a genuine 1887 Queen Anne Victorian mansion — 18 rooms, seven fireplaces, a billiard room wit… Palmer Lake
A Sanctuary Center A Sanctuary Center is a free, volunteer-maintained nonprofit sacred garden open sunrise to sunset daily, feat… Sedalia
Devil's Head Lookout Devil's Head is Colorado's last staffed fire lookout — a working ranger mans the historic 1912 tower from rou… Sedalia
The Speakeasy (Imperial Hotel basement) The Speakeasy is a real, operating basement bar tucked beneath the 1881 Imperial Hotel (originally the Zweck… Longmont
Dickens Opera House Built in 1881, this lovingly restored Victorian opera house is Longmont's most famously haunted landmark — em… Longmont
Seven Keys Lodge Key Room (formerly Baldpate Inn) Built in 1917 and now operating as Seven Keys Lodge, this mountain inn's key room drips from ceiling to floor… Estes Park
Old Firehouse Museum This genuine one-room 1910 firehouse — credibly claimed to be the world's smallest museum — spent 24 years hi… Niwot
Redman (Trail of the Whispering Giants) Redman is a 37-foot folk-art wooden head carved in 1979 from a fallen cottonwood by Hungarian-American artist… Loveland
Medusa Gothic Medusa Gothic is a Fort Collins boutique stocking gothic apparel, witchy jewelry, crystals, herbs, tarot deck… Fort Collins
Lyons Memorial Labyrinth Built on the first anniversary of the catastrophic 2013 flood using rounded cobbles and boulders deposited by… Lyons
Saul the Sticker Ball (StickerGiant lobby) Saul is a 231-pound Guinness World Record-holding ball built from over 171,000 stickers, named after Saul Goo… Longmont
Faces Bridge Tucked beneath the Wilson Avenue bridge along the Big Thompson River trail, dozens of bronze faces — human, f… Loveland
Little Thompson Observatory The Little Thompson Observatory is a fully volunteer-run public observatory on the Berthoud High School campu… Berthoud
Niwot Tree Carvings (Eddie Running Wolf) Three towering figures — Spear Lodge Man, The Eagle Catcher, and Cheyenne Holy Man — were carved from dead wi… Niwot
Mon Ami Salt Cave & Spa Mon Ami Salt Cave & Spa is a real, operating wellness retreat in Loveland where 3,000 lbs of Himalayan salt b… Loveland
The Lyric The Lyric is a genuine Fort Collins oddity: a locally owned cinema-bar-music venue that screens cult classics… Fort Collins
Charlie Tayler Water Wheel Colorado's largest wooden waterwheel — all 30 feet of it — still turns beside a cascading waterfall, built in… Idaho Springs
Hotel de Paris Museum Built in 1875 by Louis Dupuy — an army deserter and culinary eccentric who imported French wines and fresh oy… Georgetown
Central City Opera House Built by Welsh and Cornish miners in 1878 and one of the oldest professional opera companies in the country,… Central City
Indian Hot Springs Geothermal Caves Rock caves bored into the mountainside in the early 1900s form pitch-dark, steam-filled grottos where you soa… Idaho Springs
Knights of Pythias Cemetery A small, atmospheric hilltop cemetery belonging to the secretive Knights of Pythias fraternal order, where so… Black Hawk
The Face on the Barroom Floor In 1936, Denver artist Herndon Davis — furious after a fight with his project director — snuck into the Telle… Central City
Underhill Museum The Underhill Museum preserves the Victorian home and office of Dr. James Underhill — a mining engineer and U… Idaho Springs
Central City Masonic Cemetery (Woman in Black) This 1860s gold-rush-era cemetery sits atop a knoll overlooking the mountain towns of Central City and Black… Black Hawk
Carousel of Happiness Marine veteran Scott Harrison spent 26 years hand-carving 56 whimsical, one-of-a-kind animals — inspired by a… Nederland
South Park Coney Island Sitting on a grassy riverbank off Highway 285, this 42-foot hot-dog-shaped diner is one of the last surviving… Bailey
Forsythe Canyon Waterfall Trail Everyone funnels into Boulder's marquee trails and never turns up Magnolia Road, which is exactly why this on… Nederland / Gross Reservoir (Boulder County)
Sleepy Lion Trail to Button Rock Dam Most people aiming for "a hike near Boulder" never turn down the dirt road to Button Rock Preserve, which is… Lyons / Button Rock Preserve (northwest of Boulder)
Chief Mountain Trail Most people barreling up I-70 toward the famous 14ers drive right past this one — and that's the gift. Chief… Idaho Springs / Squaw Pass Road (CO-103), Arapaho National Forest
Mestaa'ehehe Mountain Fire Lookout Almost everyone driving CO-103 toward Mount Blue Sky blows right past this one: a squat 14x14 granite cab rin… Bergen Park / Clear Creek County (near Evergreen)
Isak Heartstone A 15-foot recycled-wood troll by Danish artist Thomas Dambo, built for the 2018 Breckenridge International Fe… Breckenridge
House With the Eye Museum In 1879, carpenter Eugene Robitaille worked a stained-glass all-seeing eye into his gable, and Leadville spen… Leadville
Interlaken Resort Ruins & Dexter Cabin In 1883 a Leadville mining millionaire named James Dexter bought a luxury resort on the south shore of Twin L… Twin Lakes (Leadville)
Minturn Saloon The back bar came out of Missouri in the 1830s and did time in a Leadville brothel before the railroad hauled… Minturn
The Legendary Silver Dollar Saloon Pouring since 1879, back when it was the Board of Trade and Doc Holliday dealt cards up front — his piano is… Leadville