A new book provides your solution to summer boredom.
WHEN IT COMES TO exploring the outdoors with kids, a lot of families get caught up in the skiing, hiking, and mountain biking opportunities all over our state. But you don’t have to be extreme to explore Colorado with kids.
Just ask Jamie Siebrase and Deborah Mock, authors of “Exploring Colorado with Kids: 71 Field Trips + 142 Nature-Inspired Activities” ($25, Falcon Guides), which hit bookstores in June.
From interesting nature centers and outdoor history museums to family-friendly farms and hidden SUP spots, this guidebook introduces families to an exciting range of outdoorsy adventures. They are accessible, fun, and, in most cases, free. Located all along the Front Range, the adventures are ideal for day trips or even short road trips. And it’s designed with kids of all ages in mind, from infants to 8th graders.
“There are a lot of guides to the outdoors with kids,” Siebrase pointed out, “like hiking or biking or birding. But there’s not really anything like this yet.”
All the places included are not necessarily outdoors, but they’re all outdoorsy. The authors homed in on the educational elements, too. “Each chapter has ways to extend the stuff you’re going to learn by doing things either at home or at another nearby activity.”
Siebrase would know. She homeschooled her kids for a few years during and after the height of the pandemic, and was constantly looking for ways to get her family outside. “It just really woke something up in me, to be learning alongside them and rediscovering that natural curiosity kids have,” she said.
While driving to the mountains is great, Siebrase and Mock wanted this book to appeal to Front Range families who don’t always have the time or ability to do so. “I wanted it to be stuff that anyone could drive to in about 30 minutes,” Siebrase said.
For instance, Siebrase recommends NCAR—the National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesa Laboratory—in Boulder. The authors suggest you “plan to chase your kids around the museum while they touch clouds, view a tornado created by crosswinds, steer a virtual hurricane, and tackle a weather-inspired memory game on a giant touch-screen computer … gaining a whole new perspective on weather, climate, and the sun-Earth connection.”
The authors include information about a half-mile loop on the west side of the building, as well as a 2-mile out-and-back hike weaving through Chautauqua Park.
Want something further afield? Drive 11 miles past Mount Princeton Hot Springs to the ghost town of St. Elmo, where you and the fam can soak up some mountain town history from the late 1800s. Check out the St. Elmo General Store and peer into an old one-room schoolhouse before exploring the Iron City Cemetery or checking out nearby Buena Vista.
The most important thing? Make it fun!
“My goal is to make sure my kids enjoy the outdoors, and they’re doing it on their own terms, and they’re happy,” Siebrase said. And if ice cream is involved, she added, all the better!
—Monica Parpal Stockbridge
Cover Photo by Ben Siebrase
