Golf in the Denver area is a wicked mix of spectacular mountain scenery and algebraic carnival ride. Shots fly 15 percent longer at 5,200 feet, making club selection an adventure and 600-yard par 5s pretty standard. Fossil Trace Golf Club, just north of Denver, in Golden, fits the description on both counts. Named one of Golf Digest's Best New Affordable Courses in 2003, the ★★★★ ½ Jim Engh design (fossiltrace.com, 303-277-8750) is a paleontology course wrapped in drought-resistant bent grass. The holes snake through the abandoned equipment and sandstone remains of an old clay mine -- and around fossilized dinosaur footprints.
You can feel like a superhero on the 659-yard ninth hole, blasting a 360-yard tee shot down the 50-yard-wide fairway. Or like a goat, when you hit a cocky 3-wood into the single, deep pot bunker 55 yards short of the green. Don't ask how many it took to get out.
For a post-round cocktail, make the 20-mile drive up State Route 93 to Boulder. It's the granola-y home of the University of Colorado -- and Illegal Pete's taco joint. Turn off your cell phone (or they'll make you -- trust me), order a rack of shredded beef tacos and a Fat Tire Amber and sit on the patio overlooking Pearl Street. Watching the fleets of street performers wheedle the tourists in "The People's Republic of Boulder," it'll be easy to forget you're in one of the most conservative states in the country.
The drive west from Denver is astonishing for both the beauty of the mountain scenery and the audacity of the engineering spectacle that is the Eisenhower Memorial Tunnel. Built under the ridge of mountains that make up the Continental Divide, the 1.7-mile, double-barreled tunnel sits at 11,158 feet.
To remind yourself how lucky you are to be living in the 21st century, take the last exit before the eastern mouth of the tunnel, for U.S. 6 and the Loveland Pass. The zig-zagging road was the only way to cross the mountains until 1973, when the tunnel opened. You climb into the cloud layer at 12,000 feet, where snowboarders can catch runs at Arapahoe Basin deep into June.
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