Fruita, Palisade Lead Colorado’s Growing ‘Western Slope’ Art Scene

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Martha Pierce , a 34-year-old former marketing agency owner, who started her own business coaching practice this year and left Denver, Colorado for Santa Teresa, Costa Rica.

With its endless blue skies and hiking, climbing and exploring galore, Colorado is a wonderful place to introduce the kiddos to the great outdoors.

The best time to visit Colorado depends on how you want to spend your time in the Centennial State. From world-class skiing and snowboarding in the winter to picturesque hiking and mountain biking in the summer, Colorado is all about outdoor recreation, which is largely seasonal and weather-dependent.

Colorado is a large, geographically diverse state that’s best explored by car.

Seen from Paris’s Pont de la Tournelle, the eight-story facade of the landmark restaurant La Tour d’Argent looks about the same as it did when its third-generation owner André Terrail grew up there in the 1980s, deploying toy parachutists into quayside traffic. But the interior is no longer indifferent to the 21st century: Late last month, La Tour d’Argent reopened its doors after a yearlong renovation led by the Paris-based architect Franklin Azzi. “It’s my Tour,” says Terrail, who took over following his father’s death in 2006. “The same, but more exacting, more thoughtful.” The new look draws on the outsize history of the classically French fine-dining institution, which has been serving diners since 1582, taking particular inspiration from the streamlined motifs of its Art Deco era. On the seventh floor, the redesigned restaurant — overseen since 2020 by executive chef Yannick Franques — functions more than ever as a theater. The airy dining room, in shades of indigo and silver, looks onto an open-plan kitchen and an elevated platform where the restaurant’s signature pressed-duck dish is prepared nightly. Upstairs and downstairs are new bars suited to less formal occasions: Le Bar des Maillets d’Argent, an all-day lounge with a fireplace, andLe Toit de la Tour, a rooftop terrace. Given that it has the welcoming air of a boutique hotel, it’s no wonder that the building can now host overnight visitors in a private apartment on the fifth floor, complete with a touch of Scandinavian-style minimalism attributable, in part, to Terrail’s Finnish mother.

Colorado’s culinary scene is officially on the Michelin map: Five restaurants have earned Michelin stars and dozens more garnered recommendations from the esteemed guide.

Famous for its fresh mountain air, Colorado is a place to get high – in more ways than one. The mighty spine of the Rocky Mountains cuts through the west of the Centennial State, lifting the landscape up into a rugged tumult of towering mountains, high desert mesa and slot canyons. 

Colorado is justly famous for its breathtaking landscapes: mountain vistas, sun-drenched plains, red rock mesas and high deserts. All of which look especially fetching through a windshield.

Colorado is one of those places that appear on just about everyone’s bucket list, and for good reason.

With more than 300 glorious days of sun and majestic landscapes to match, it’s no wonder Colorado beckons to outdoorsy types.

In case you spent last weekend in a coma, you missed one of college football’s most abysmal programs rise from the ashes and stun a 20-point favorite on their home turf. The University of Colorado’s upset over last year’s title contender Texas Christian University may have been a surprise to much of the nation (and clearly Vegas oddsmakers), but not to Buffalo fans and alumni.

Colorado is the sweetheart of the Rockies, a place that showcases the natural beauty of the West, from mountain peaks and aspen forests to river valleys and high-desert mesas.