Photo: Grant Ordelheide
When the editors at Hemispheres circulated our first Readers’ Choice Awards ballot this spring, a few of the winners felt preordained. One of these was Colorado, which our readers chose as the Best U.S. State for Adventure, over a worthy list of competitors including California, Arizona, Utah, and Montana. After all, visitors to the Centennial State can embark on a crazy variety of outdoors excursions: kayaking the Colorado River, climbing in Garden of the Gods, sandboarding in Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve, skiing in Telluride or Vail or Aspen or Breckenridge. Even settling down for the night can be exhilarating, when you do so in a meadow that’s more than 11,000 feet above sea level, with a view of Lower Blue Lake, in the Mount Sneffels Wilderness. We doubt you’ll have trouble sleeping after the hike up here, but if you do, no worries—just count the bighorn sheep.
Next-up: Our Readers’ Choice winners
