Discover Denver , Colorado, the Rocky Mountain National Park, the Denver Parks system, the Aquarium, Museum and  outlying areas, and  make it part of your next vacation! Free accommodation  for educators with home stay and home exchange.

Located in a spectacular setting at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, Denver is one of America's fastest growing cities -- and one of its most exciting. With 300 sunny days a year,The Mile High City entertains over 8.8 million visitors a year.The Rocky mountains are one hour away, for skiing, hiking and camping.There are numerous trails for hiking, mountain biking and nature watching . Rocky Mountain National Park and several world class ski/golf resorts such as Aspen, Vail, Keystone, Breckenridge and Winter Park are within an hour or two. Kayaking, and rockclimbing add to the adventures waiting for you in this beautiful part of Colorado.

Denver is the largest city within a 600-mile radius -- an area almost the size of Europe.Downtown Denver has great restaurants, museums, nightlife and ballfields.All of the big city attractions such as theatre, symphony, museums, aquarium, professional sporting events, and amusement parks are available.

Attractions you may not know about in the area...
Read more in detail further down the page.  

	Rocky Mountain National Park has 412 square miles of scenic beauty, located just 71 miles northwest of Denver
	Echo Lake with Mount Evans in the background. Echo  Lake is part of the Denver Mountain Park system and is maintained by the City of Denver. The road to the top of Mount Evans is the highest in North America climbing to14,260 feet above sea level. The summit is 60 miles from  Denver.
	Vail is two hours west of Denver, and is one of the top ski destinations.
	Colorado’s Ocean Journey is a new $93 million world class aquarium that features 15,000 fish, mammals and plants in a facility that holds a million gallons of water
	Cinco de Mayo in Civic Center Park. Denver hosts the  nation's largest Cinco de Mayo festival on the weekend closest to May 5 with more than a quarter of a million  people attending this celebration of Latino culture.
	This is the third largest museum of its kind in the United  States. Prehistoric Journey is a $7 million exhibit that covers the history of life on Earth, complete with a dramatic collection of dinosaur skeletons.

The aquarium is located in Denver’s Platte Valley. Visitors  enter the aquarium and have two distinctly different river journeys to follow: The Colorado River and Indonesia’s Kampar River. Located on opposite sides of the globe, the rivers both start at 12,000 feet above sea level and both ultimately feed into the Pacific Ocean, yet they are as different as can be, representing two entirely unique ecosystems.

 The Colorado River Journey starts at 12,700 feet and follows waterfalls and trout streams through the high mountains down to the arid river canyons of the American southwest. A flash flood  sends 2,500 gallons of water rushing down a dry creek bed every two and a half minutes. Finally, the river reaches the Sea of Cortez where tanks have green moray eels, spotted eagle rays and exquisite schooling fish.

The journey down Indonesia’s great Kampar River has similar beginnings in the volcanic mountain chains of Sumatra’s West Coast. Though nearly as high as Colorado, the  temperature here is 80 degrees and the humidity so intense that it is a visible mist. As visitors travel through the rain forest, they will encounter two critically endangered Sumatran tigers. Tigers actually like water, and the exhibit shows that water is essential  to all living creatures.

 Near the river’s end is a mangrove forest – the only tree that grows in salt water. Next,  there is a coral lagoon that includes a barrier reef with spy starfish and hermit crabs. At the end of the journey, is the breathtaking Open Blue with a variety of sharks such as   blacktip reef, nurse, zebra and tiger sharks, along with vibrantly colored tropical reef fish.

Denver’s 47 mountain parks are unique because all of them are located outside of the city’s borders — one of them is 70 miles from the city and 8,000 feet above it.

The parks preserved every type of landscape and life zone found in Colorado,from flat prairie to alpine tundra located high above timber line. The parks also preserved important historic sites, from 300 million year old geological formations to the grave and final resting spot of Buffalo Bill Cody. One park is completely inaccessible and was acquired just to preserve some scenic cliffs visible from Hwy. U.S. 285.
 
 

Echo Lake with Mount Evans in the background. 

ECHO LAKE PARK: One of the prettiest mountain lakes in Colorado, Echo Lake is found 10,000 feet above sea level at the base of Mount Evans. It is here that the highest paved highway in North America (second highest in the world) begins to snake its way upward to the 14,260 foot summit of Mount Evans. Due to snow at this altitude, the road to the actual summit is open only from June to Labor Day, but the lower elevation of Echo Lake is accessible — and beautiful — at any time of the year. Excellent fishing and picnic sites can be found here, as well as an abundance of hiking trails. An unusual octagonal log cabin operated by Denver Mountain Parks has a gift shop and restaurant.

Rocky Mountain National Park

 RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATRE: Probably the best known of the 47 parks, this 9,000-seat, acoustically perfect amphitheatre was carved out between two gigantic red rock boulders that flank the theatre, rising 500 feet on either side. 
The park is open year-round and is free, except when there is a scheduled performance. A well-marked nature trail winds through the rocks, explaining their geologic history. The entire area was once the beach of a great inland sea that covered Colorado 70 million years ago. When the modern Rocky Mountains were formed, the beach, now compressed into soft red rocks, were  pushed up at an angle. Dinosaur Ridge (visible from the park) is the site where the first large dinosaur fossils in the world were discovered. Red Rocks is 12 miles from downtown Denver.

BUFFALO BILL’S GRAVE & MUSEUM: Located on top of Lookout Mountain with spectacular views of both the snowcapped Rockies and the high plains of Denver, this is the final resting spot of the famous showman and frontier scout, Buffalo Bill Cody. A museum provides a well-rounded  look at his exciting life, from Pony Express rider and buffalo hunter to the world’s greatest showman, who often performed before the crowned heads of Europe. The park is best approached  by the Lariat Trail from Golden, a winding scenic highway with a dozen pull-offs offering  sweeping views of the mountains and plains.

DENVER’S BUFFALO HERD: In 1914, there was only one wild buffalo herd left in America. Although they were protected in Yellowstone National Park, it was feared that one natural disaster could cause American bison to become extinct, so a small herd was donated to Denver Mountain Parks. Today, the descendants of this last wild herd of buffalo graze on both sides of Interstate 70 about 15 miles west of Denver. A special “buffalo only” tunnel under the highway allows the beasts to roam on beautiful grass slopes on either side of the Interstate. Pine forests and one of  the prettiest views of the snowcapped Front Range of the Rockies can be found at the car  pull-offs at the site. A second buffalo herd roams in Daniels Park, south of the city.

SUMMIT LAKE: The highest city park in the world, Summit Lake lies at 13,001 feet near the  summit of Mount Evans. The lake can be frozen solid even in June, and offers simply spectacular views of rugged cliffs and jagged snow-cragged peaks and ledges. There are two herds of Rocky Mountain goats and big horn sheep on Mount Evans and they can be seen almost every day in the summer along the road to the summit near Summit Lake.

WINTER PARK: The City of Denver owns this gigantic international ski resort, but leases it to a private operator for payments of about $2 million a year. Winter Park and sister mountain Mary Jane have 121 trails and 20 lifts, making it the fourth largest ski area in Colorado, and one of the most popular. An exciting way to travel to the mountain is by taking the Ski Train, which leaves Denver’s Union Station every weekend in the winter. Burrowing through 34 tunnels, the 700-passenger Ski Train (the largest passenger train in America) takes two hours to climb from the plains of Denver up through dark forests, clinging to narrow ledges above roaring ice-crusted  rivers, until arriving at Winter Park, just a hundred yards from the lifts.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK Located 65 mi/ 104 km northwest of Denver, this is Colorado’s most popular attraction, with more than 3 million annual visitors coming to view the park’s scenic beauty. Trail Ridge Road crosses the park, forming the highest continuous highway in North America, reaching heights of 12,183 ft/ 3,736 m. Massive peaks, rugged canyons, flower-studded meadows, peaceful lakes and the thundering waterfalls combine to offer a complete look at the  beauty of the Rocky Mountains. Activities including hiking, biking, camping, horseback riding, climbing, fishing and viewing wildlife. There are four visitors’ centers within the park. Two of the centers and Trail Ridge Road are generally open from late May to mid- October, and are closed because of snow the remainder of the year. Popular activities include driving over Trail Ridge  Road with stops at the Alpine Visitors Center, which is 11,796 ft/ 3,597 m above sea level, and  includes exhibits about the plants and animals that live at that altitude. Another popular stop is  beautiful Bear Lake, which has paved a trail around it and offers a chance to view beaver dams and a high mountain basin lake. Estes Park on the east and Grand Lake on the west are two resort villages, filled with shopping, dining and accommodations. 

More than six years in the making, Prehistoric Journey is a spectacular $7.7 million look at the history of life on the earth, all wonderfully displayed in a 17,000 square foot permanent exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. It is the city’s largest and most ambitious museum exhibit studying the 3.5 billion-year history of life on Earth.

Visitors begin their Prehistoric Journey in a time-travel theater where they are taken back in time to when the first forms of life appeared. As happened with life on earth, visitors start
their journey “under water,” viewing dioramas of an ancient sea floor filled with strange,soft-bodied creatures without eyes, mouths or legs.

Then, climbing a stairway, visitors emerge onto dry land in Beartooth Butte, Wyoming, 395 million years ago. Following a trail, visitors wind their way past actual fossil sites that have
  been recreated into “envioramas” that duplicate the sights and sounds of what these areas would have looked like millions of years ago. With no glass impairing the view, visitors stroll through the middle of a Cretaceous Creekbed, a Nebraska Woodland and along the shore of the Kansas Coast, as it appeared 295 million years ago when much of America
 was covered with a great inland sea. Prehistoric Journey is the only exhibit exploring life history that reconstructs actual fossil sites from specific locations, explaining how scientists used fossils to learn about the ancient plants and animals of the area. Part of  the exhibit includes a working fossil laboratory where visitors can watch museum scientists work on fossils just as they would at an actual dig site.

And then there are dinosaurs. Prehistoric Journey features the museum’s famous collection of dinosaurs in stunning new poses, including a dramatic reconstruction of a fierce battle between an Allosaurus and Stegosaurus. There are 12 dinosaur skeletons (including an 80-foot-long Diplodocus) and seven dinosaur skulls, all displayed in a gigantic multi-story room. But it is the Dinohyus that will probably be everyone’s favorite.
 Nicknamed the “terminator pig,” this truly frightful creature from 20 million years ago is shown “fleshed out” as it stalks prey on the Nebraska woodland, complete with grunting  noises and the sounds of thunder rumbling in the distance. 

Cinco de Mayo is a holiday celebrated on May 5 by Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Its name is Spanish for Fifth of May. 

Cinco de Mayo commemorates the victory of a Mexican army over a French army at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. The Mexican army, led by General Ignacio Zaragoza, won the battle even though the French force was better armed and three times as large. The battle occurred after Emperor Napoleon III of France sent troops to Mexico to conquer the country. 

Despite the Mexican victory at Puebla, the French later gained control of Mexico City and established a French-supported government there. In 1866 and 1867, however, France withdrew its troops from Mexico because of resistance by many Mexicans and pressure from the United States. The French-backed government soon fell.