Long Weekend in Fort Collins, CO

Recently I was fortunate enough to spend a long weekend visiting my family in Fort Collins, Colorado. My parents moved to Fort Collins a little over four years ago, and last year my grandparents decided that they enjoyed the foothills community enough to leave their lifelong home state of New Jersey and join them. For me, visiting Fort Collins has always meant enjoying the best of both travel and home life. The city is always new to me, yet I can enjoy the luxury of my familiar bed and favorite meals each night.

This most recent trip to Fort Collins was particularly meaningful because my girlfriend accompanied me. She had never been to Colorado, so I planned to show her some of my favorite spots while also experiencing some new attractions together. As such, I made sure to schedule a long bike ride to Old Town, my favorite part of Fort Collins, and my parents assisted in the latter objective by taking us whitewater rafting on the Cache la Poudre River.

Quick Tips:

As expected, we had a great time, but of course the trip felt several days too short. Our visit was long enough, however, to perhaps sharpen my understanding of Fort Collins as a community.

If the ubiquitous annual rankings of most livable US cities are any indication, Fort Collins is indeed a great place to settle down, and I've certainly never seen so many city activities and facilities dedicated to children, seniors, and dogs. Like many American communities, however, Fort Collins seems in danger of being swallowed by chain restaurants and megaplexes, but also like many suburbs, it manages to shine in its remaining pockets of regional character. In this case of Fort Collins, this means the spectacular natural beauty of the rocky mountain foothills, its frontier past, and Colorado State University, for better or worse the city's largest arbiter of culture.

Best Way To Get Around:

A visit to Fort Collins is most rewarding when approached from one of vantages, and if you do visit, make sure to bring a car as the city spreads out widely and buses run infrequently. Or, better yet, bring a bike.

One of my favorite restaurants in Fort Collins is Austin’s American Grill, located in the Old Town walking district. Well known for serving gigantic cornbread croutons with their salads, Austin’s also features a full bar serving several local microbrews and a perky, smartly dressed waitstaff comprised of what I imagine to be some of the more attractive Colorado State University students.

After picking Maya and me up at the airport, my parents informed us that Austin’s had recently opened a new location on the other side of town, and we agreed to make it our first meal in Fort Collins. Like its sister restaurant, this Austin’s also featured an impressive bar and friendly waitstaff while adding a large, chicken-roasting fireplace and increased seating to the mix.

The four of us were seated with no wait, though by the time we left at 12:30pm, the restaurant had grown crowded with business lunchers. My parents both ordered very large house salads (with croutons), and Maya sampled the grilled salmon. Austin’s also features a few vegetarian-friendly options, and I enjoyed the grilled portobello mushroom burger, a large, sloppy sandwich accompanied by salty shoestring fries. No one had any complaints with the meal, and refills of iced tea were offered often.

If you visit Austin’s, be sure to check out the stylishly confusing restroom sinks.

Once a month, my parents enjoy dressing up and attending a show or concert at Fort Collins’s Lincoln Center, and they usually start these arts-and-culture evenings by dining at one of their favorite local restaurants, Jay’s Bistro. As I had not yet eaten at Jay’s during any of my visits, they offered to treat Maya and me to a nice dinner and we eagerly accepted.

It was a pleasant night, so we asked to sit outside. Unfortunately, despite its well-deserved reputation as one of Fort Collins's nicer restaurants, the patio accommodations were lacking. The construction noise, plastic chairs, and wobbly tables were incongruous with the live jazz and quality of food, so after a few uncertain moments of debate, we asked our server to move us inside.

Thankfully, this graciously fulfilled request was the start of a much better evening, and thereafter the restaurant did not disappoint. Surrounded by well-dressed locals, we took the rare opportunity to enjoy several drinks, appetizers, and an unrushed meal. Calamari, scallops, salads, salmon, and pesto pasta were had, and we enjoyed fresh sorbet and a chocolate for desert. Good food combined with an extremely attentive waitstaff make Jay’s a highly recommended "special occasion" restaurant.

On our last day in Fort Collins, my girlfriend Maya and I borrowed my parent''s 25-year-old coaster bikes and decided to take a short ride to Old Town to enjoy some lunch. We didn''t have a map, but this posed no problem as the bike path was well marked. After picking up the path on the eastern edge of the city, we followed it through a few miles of surprisingly varied scenery. Within an hour we had biked past a flat, dried-out prairie, some rolling hills, a short stretch of green woods, and the Cache la Poudre River. We also managed to spot a few animals along the way, highlighted by a mother duck leading her brood across a stream and an unsettling amount of groundhogs. We didn''t, however, see many people, and this was a welcome development.

Upon reaching Old Town we locked our bikes and enjoyed lunch at a local brewery called CooperSmith''s (#5 Old Town Square). Maya complained that the restrooms in the restaurant were poorly marked, but I believe this to be a minor quibble.

Unfortunately, upon leaving the restaurant I discovered that my front tire had gone flat. I initially blamed the incident on school kids playing a prank, but a quick search revealed no likely offenders and thus no ears to box. Luckily, the nearest bike repair shop was a short distance away, and the leak was soon repaired.

Maya and I biked home on roughly the same path, but as we neared the city''s indoor skating rink and swimming pool complex, I suffered my second flat tire of the day. It would be easy to blame the Fort Collins bike path for my bad luck, but in truth, the most likely cause was the age and condition of my parents'' bicycles. After a brief phone discussion, my father agreed, and Maya and I finished our bike ride in his van.

On Friday of our long weekend in Fort Collins, my parents, Maya, and I went whitewater rafting on the nearby Cache la Poudre River. Known to locals as simply "The Poudre" (pronounced "poo-der"), this congressionally designated "wild and scenic" river begins high in the Rocky Mountains and flows through Roosevelt National Forest and Poudre Canyon before turning into a creek just outside Fort Collins.

My father had organized the trip a few weeks earlier by making a phone reservation with a local rafting outfit called Mountain Whitewater Descents. MWD offered three levels of rafting, and we opted for the "Poudre Splash," a $42 per person trip which was advertised as "little splash, a little sun, a lot of fun" and most importantly to my mother, the "ideal introductory rafting trip."

We began the trip by meeting at 11:30am at the company office, a facility that included a sand volleyball court, hot tub, and barbecue pit. Our first step towards the river was signing a release form, and then a rafting guide led us through a comprehensive but entertaining overview of whitewater safety. Finally, we were fitted for life jackets and helmets and then boarded a school bus for the river.

After a half-hour trip, we reached the entry point and helped move the rafts to the water. With this chore done, we were assigned a personal river guide and several shipmates. Our crew consisted of Kricket, a guide from Denver, and a mother, father, and their two young Boy Scout sons. We boarded the raft and practiced our strokes, and then Kricket told us a little about the river's history. "Cache la Poudre" is French for "hiding place for powder," and according to local legend, fur trappers once stashed a large amount of gunpowder along the riverbank after getting caught in a snowstorm. Kricket also mentioned that we should keep an eye out for wildlife as the river was home to eagles, black bears, bighorn sheep, deer, and elk.

Though indeed an "introductory rafting trip," our experience on The Poudre was more of an adventure than we had anticipated. Shortly after the trip began lightening streaked dramatically across the sky, and by the time we hit our first rapid it had started to rain. Though not overwhelming, this first stretch of class II whitewater did alert us to the possibility that more challenging rapids lay ahead. We survived the ominously named class III Decapitation Bridge without incident, but were not nearly as fortunate on Roller Coaster, the next set of rapids.

As we approached Roller Coaster, the roar of crashing whitewater drowned out Kricket's instructions and suddenly our raft tipped. After some confusion, we discovered that both my mother and father had been knocked overboard and were rapidly floating down the river. With some effort we returned them to the raft a little bruised and shaken, but with undiminished enthusiasm. The remainder of the trip was decidedly less exciting, but overall it was a great experience.

Below are some more photos from the bike ride. Most of these are from the pretty downtown walking district of Fort Collins called Old Town.