Colorado What To Do›With Kids
Twenty things that genuinely hold a child's attention — plus the altitude problem that catches families out on day one, and how to avoid it.
Read this first
How does altitude affect kids in Colorado?
Children are affected faster than adults, and it usually shows up as irritability, poor sleep and loss of appetite rather than anything dramatic. Sleep your first night at a lower elevation, keep everyone drinking more water than feels necessary, and save the most demanding activity for day three. If a headache with nausea will not resolve, the treatment is to descend.
Here is the arithmetic. The percentage of oxygen in the air never changes — it is about 20.9% everywhere. What changes is air pressure, and pressure is what pushes oxygen into blood.
At Denver's 5,280 feet, air delivers roughly 82% of the oxygen it does at sea level. At 10,000 feet, about 69%. That is not a small difference, and small bodies notice it sooner.
Families routinely land, drive straight to a mountain town at 9,000 feet, and spend day two wondering why everybody is miserable. Then they blame the trip.
None of this is a reason to avoid Colorado with children. It is a reason to plan the first 48 hours differently than you would anywhere else. Our full guide to reading a Colorado mountain day covers the physiology in more detail, including a working oxygen calculator.
The family finder
Filter by region and cost. Everything here holds a child's attention for longer than the drive it took to get there.
Showing all 22
Estes Park & Grand Lake
Alpine tundra, 355 miles of trail and the headwaters of the Colorado River. Trail Ridge Road crosses above 12,000 feet.
Timed entry reservation required May 22 through mid-October 2026.
Colorado Springs
Vertical red sandstone fins pushed upright by the same uplift that raised Pikes Peak. Paved trails, and free forever by deed.
Donated to Colorado Springs in 1909 on the condition it stay free to the public.
Mosca
The tallest dunes in North America, roughly 750 feet, piled against the Sangre de Cristo range. Rent a sandboard in Alamosa.
Sand surface can exceed 150°F on summer afternoons. Go early or late.
Cortez
Roughly 5,000 archaeological sites including some 600 Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings, protected since 1906.
Cliff Palace requires a ranger-led ticket booked in advance.
Morrison
A concert venue wedged between two 300-foot sandstone monoliths. Free to walk any day nothing is scheduled, and people run the stairs at sunrise.
Great Sand Dunes
Rent a board or a sled in Alamosa and ride 750-foot dunes. It is the single best kid activity in Colorado and it wears everyone out completely.
Denver
Four floors of immersive art built by hundreds of artists, wrapped around a science fiction story you can follow or ignore. Plan three hours.
Denver
Serious paleontology and anthropology collections plus the Gates Planetarium, with a full Front Range view from the west windows.
Morrison
Jurassic bones on one side of the ridge and hundreds of Cretaceous footprints on the other. Walking the public road is free; the bus tour is not.
The Morrison Formation is literally named after this town.
Boulder
I.M. Pei designed it after studying the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. Free exhibit floor on atmospheric science, free parking, and trails leaving from the lot.
Glenwood Springs
One of the largest geothermal pools anywhere, right off I-70. The reliable answer when weather ruins the rest of the plan.
Salida & Buena Vista
The most-rafted river in the country, running everything from gentle floats to Class IV whitewater in Browns Canyon.
Low snow years shorten the big-water window — ask the outfitter what the gauge reads.
Estes Park
September and October, at dawn and dusk. Hundreds of elk bugling in the meadows. Watch from the car and keep your distance.
Cañon City
A suspension bridge hanging 956 feet above the Arkansas River, for decades the highest in the world.
Rye
A full stone castle with towers, iron catwalks and a fire-breathing dragon, built almost single-handedly by Jim Bishop starting in 1969. No admission charge.
Durango
A coal-fired steam train running an 1882 narrow-gauge route through the Animas River canyon. A full day, and worth it.
Fruita & Grand Junction
Twenty-three miles of rim road above red rock canyons and freestanding monoliths. Stunning, and almost never crowded.
San Luis Valley and statewide
Colorado has 13 International Dark Sky Parks and eight Dark Sky Communities — more places in the certification process than anywhere on Earth.
Go near a new moon and give your eyes 30 minutes to adjust.
La Junta
A full reconstruction of an 1830s adobe trading post on the Santa Fe Trail, staffed in period. The best history stop on the plains.
Calhan
Banded clay hoodoos and spires that look like southern Utah dropped onto the Colorado prairie. Free, and almost nobody is there.
Denver
Two buildings that argue with each other — Gio Ponti's 1971 tower and Daniel Libeskind's angular 2006 addition. Major Indigenous Arts of North America collection.
Denver
A restored 1914 station that is now a public great hall with bars, restaurants and shops. Free to sit in, and the train from the airport arrives here in about 37 minutes.
Nothing matches those filters. Try clearing one.
By age
Keep it low and keep it short. Denver Union Station's great hall is free, indoors and endlessly interesting to small children — trains arrive, people move, and nobody minds noise. Red Rocks is free to walk and the scale alone does the work. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science has a dedicated discovery area.
Skip the fourteeners, obviously, and skip anything requiring a two-hour drive each way.
This is the sweet spot for Colorado. Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison puts real Cretaceous footprints on a tilted slab you can stand next to — and the Morrison Formation is literally named after that town. Sandboarding the Great Sand Dunes is physically demanding and completely novel. The Durango & Silverton steam railroad runs an 1882 narrow-gauge route through a river canyon, which is a long day but a memorable one.
The elk rut in Estes Park in September and October is free, spectacular and viewed from the car. Hundreds of elk, bugling at dawn and dusk. Keep your distance — a bull elk in rut is a 700-pound animal with a bad attitude.
Raise the intensity. Rafting the Arkansas through Browns Canyon, the Royal Gorge Bridge 956 feet above the river, mountain biking, or Meow Wolf Convergence Station, which is four floors of immersive art with a story hidden inside it.
Fourteeners become plausible around this age, provided everyone is acclimatised and you start before sunrise. Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet is the highest in the state and one of the more walkable.
Plan B
Afternoon storms are near-daily from mid-July into early September. A washed-out afternoon is normal here, so have the indoor list ready before you need it.
The other constant is the two o'clock rule. Colorado's summer storms build on a daily cycle you can plan around: mornings are reliably clear, afternoons are not. Do the outdoor thing first and hold the museum for later.
Common questions
Sandboarding at Great Sand Dunes National Park, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, the Durango & Silverton steam railroad, dinosaur footprints at Dinosaur Ridge twenty minutes from Denver, watching the elk rut in Estes Park in September and October, and the Royal Gorge Bridge 956 feet above the Arkansas River. Plan a low-elevation first day — altitude affects children faster than adults.
Children are affected faster than adults, and it usually shows up as irritability, poor sleep and loss of appetite rather than anything dramatic. Sleep your first night at a lower elevation such as Denver or Colorado Springs before going higher, keep everyone drinking more water than feels necessary, and save the most demanding activity for day three. If a headache with nausea will not resolve, the treatment is to descend.
Very. Four national parks, a steam railroad, dinosaur fossils you can stand next to, dunes you can sled down and a free museum floor on atmospheric science all sit within a few hours of Denver. The main planning constraints are altitude on day one and driving distances — Denver to Durango is about six and a half hours, so pick one region rather than three.
The Denver Museum of Nature & Science in City Park has dinosaurs, gems and the Gates Planetarium. Meow Wolf Convergence Station is four floors of immersive art that works well for older children. Union Station's great hall is free to sit in, and Dinosaur Ridge in Morrison — with real Cretaceous footprints on a tilted rock slab — is about twenty minutes away and free to walk.
It is arguably the best kid activity in Colorado. You rent a sandboard or sled in Alamosa and ride the tallest dunes in North America, roughly 750 feet. It wears children out completely. The one serious caution is heat — the sand surface can exceed 150°F on summer afternoons, so go early or in the evening and always wear shoes.
Skiing and snowboarding, obviously, and most Colorado resorts run ski schools. Beyond that: snowshoeing, which needs no lesson and costs about the price of a lift-ticket lunch, and hot springs. Glenwood Hot Springs is one of the largest geothermal pools anywhere and is right off I-70, which makes it the reliable answer when the weather turns.
Entrance fees are typically charged per vehicle rather than per person, so children do not add cost. The National Park Service also runs a free annual pass for fourth graders and their families. Rocky Mountain National Park additionally requires a timed entry reservation from May 22 through mid-October 2026, which carries a $2 processing fee on top of entry.
About a week, focused on one region. Five to seven days lets you build in an acclimatisation day at lower elevation, reach a national park, and still have downtime. Trying to combine the Front Range, the mountains and the Western Slope in under a week means the children spend most of the holiday in a car seat.
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