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Help Build the Continental Divide Trail in Colorado Next Year

Volunteers in Colorado are helping to build a completely new hiking trail, called the Continental Divide Trail (CDT), that stretches from Mexico to Canada and across Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Volunteers with the Continental Divide Trail Alliance (CDTA)—based in Golden, Colorado—dig out the trail, clear vegetation and move huge boulders and trees from the established route.

If forging a new trail sounds like a New Year's resolution you'd like to make, CDTA is already lining up volunteers for next season, which runs from April to October. Volunteer trips can last from one day to one week and include trail building, maintaining the existing trail, helping the crew chefs prepare meals, and participating in educational outreach programs. Trip leaders provide all gear, food and water, while volunteers bring their own tents, sleeping bags and day packs.

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Holiday Travel / Free Stuff / Denver Travel / Southwest Airlines / Colorado Travel / Events / → All Tags

Lace Up Your Skates for Southwest Airlines' Downtown Denver Ice Rink

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for Southwest Airlines, and we’re not just talking about their plans to giveaway free holiday photos and Santa snapshots. Now the holiday spirit is moving to the Mile High City, as the airline and the city is bringing back the Rink at Skyline Park for the 2011 season.

Denver already has its own Southwest Porch—complete with pizzas and drinks—but now the rink is back to help you burn off some of those mozzarella induced calories. The skating is open to one and all, as long as you can get yourself over to 16th and Arapahoe streets.

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Modern Art Travel: Six Miles of Fabric, a Rocky Mountain River and Christo

Mark your calendars for a trip to Colorado in 2014 as plans for the next large, public art project by Christo finally moves forward.

This is a huge deal, not just for fans of Christo and modern art in general, but for Denver, Coloradans, tourists to the state and anyone who enjoys experiencing the great outdoors. Christo, in case you've forgotten the massive "Gates" installation in Central Park, is an artist who typically wraps or covers areas or landmarks in fabric. A personal favorite is his wrapped Reichstag. The project in CO, however—Over the River—would stretch some 6 miles of translucent silver fabric over the Arkansas River.

Yesterday "Over the River" received the OK from federal officials and now the plan is off to state and local authorities before work may begin. Naturally we're already imagining rafting down the river and hiking along it, Christo's creation above our heads.

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A Couple Options for Scoring Sold-Out Tickets to The Great American Beer Festival

The granddaddy of all beer festivals is taking place later this month in Denver. It's the Great American Beer Festival and it runs from September 29 and October 1. There’s not just a few hundred beers and breweries here either, as this sucker will have more than 450 brewers in attendance with over 2,000 beers. There are four sessions spread across the three days of the year’s festival, and whichever one you pick is going to be a winner.

Hold on a sec. It's not just about guzzling either; this festival goes way above and beyond the traditional beer festival by including an on-site beer enthusiast bookstore, discussions from the American Homebrewers Association, and a farm-to-table pavilion. Expect plenty of samples from CAUTION: Brewing Company, Del Norte Brewing Company, and Glenwood Canyon Brewing Company, along with plenty of options from outside Colorado.

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Keep Toasting to 2011 with Three Winter Beer Festivals in January

Sure the majority of the holidays have come and gone, but that just means we need something new to entertain us until the summer warmth returns. There's still plenty of special winter beers and brews to sample, so here’s our picks for three festivals from which to take a sip or two this January.

· Denver’s Winter Brew Fest 2011:
Citizens of Denver know their beer, and they’re ready to celebrate their love of the sudsy stuff at the end of January. On Friday, January 28 the annual Winter Brew Fest is ready to welcome both craft brewers and mega breweries to Mile High Station to celebrate ales, lagers, and stouts. Expect at least 35 breweries from around the state, country, and world to bring over 90 different varieties of beverages to share. Best of all, some of the proceeds of your admission go to benefit the Swallow Hill Music Association.

Tickets are still available, but we’d act quickly, as we’re sure a beer festival in Colorado is guaranteed to sell out. Tickets are $30 in advance and include unlimited tastings of the festival’s best brews. You’ll even get a souvenir tasting glass that you’re free to stumble out the door with once you’ve had your fill. Of course there will be plenty of live music, great food, and other stuff for sale to help balance all the delicious beer samples.

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Don a Hair Net to Help Create Candy Canes at Hammond's Candies

Growing up, we were satisfied with grabbing our candy canes and other holiday goodies from a place like CVS or Walgreens, but now that our palettes are a little more refined we’re eager to sink our teeth into more gourmet candies. So if you’re traveling through Denver this Christmas season you might want to take a detour to Hammond’s Candies where they’ve been cranking out the sweet and sticky goodies since 1920.

Even though they’re plenty busy adding stripes to candy canes this time of the year, they’ll be happy to show you around their factory. Tours are totally free and are offered every 30 minutes during the week, as well as on Saturday. Things close down on Sunday, as even candy makers don’t love their jobs that much. No reservations are required, so you can just pretty much show up and see how all the confections take their shape.

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Why is the Cast of 'Big Brother 12' Obsessed with the Steamboat Music Fest?

We may not know which of the remaining Big Brother houseguests will win tonight, but we do know where all of them will be come January. Anyone who has watched Big Brother After Dark or has seen even a few minutes of the Live Feeds, knows that two of the cast members, Hayden and Lane, are obsessed with “Steamboat.” Last week, Hayden even admitted it was his “favorite thing to talk about in the house.”

Both Lane and Hayden have been to the annual music festival before and love it so much they’ve spent much of their time in the house convincing their fellow houseguests to join them in Colorado this winter.

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Google Maps Expands Street View To Boulder's 360 Miles of Bike Routes

The Google GPS trike!

In January we told you about how Google used their new specially designed GPS trike to go where no Google Maps had gone before, mapping the inside of the San Diego Zoo. Now the search giant is taking their toy off-road, promising to add Boulder, Colorado's 360 miles of bike routes to Street View. The city officially won a contest after 1 in 5 residents voted online, asking to be the test site for a new kind of Google Maps biking feature.

Google Maps can already create point-to-point driving routes, bus routes, and walking routes for many major cities. This new project seems geared toward giving a fourth kind of route option, one that would take commuters and travelers along biking trails. If bikes are going to become a stable mode of transportation—and they already are in some American cities, to say nothing about certain European capitals—then this just makes good sense.

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Colorado Picks Three 'Snow Virgins' For Three-Month Ski Vacation

Colorado's most recent we-really-hope-this-goes-viral marketing campaign is drawing to a close, as the state's tourism board has settled on three lucky "snow virgins" to get 3-month all-expense paid skiing trips. The entire contest—which began with candidates sending in personal videos before getting flown in for final interviews—hopes to leverage a bunch of new social media to get Colorado's slopes exposure.

The three winners, who can be found on SnowAtFirstSight.com, will use blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr to discuss their experiences. In any case the kids all sound exceptionally bubbly. Exceptionally bubbly:

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Colorado Ski Town Ready For Wacky Tobaccy To Hit The Slopes

There’s a new way to relax after a long day on the ski slopes, and we’re not talking about downing a hot toddy by the lodge fireplace. The town of Breckenridge, Colorado recently voted to legalize marijuana within the ski town. For those that spend more time rolling down the mountain rather than remaining on two feet—this is excellent news.

The town voted overwhelmingly to allow snowboarders, skiers, and all others over 21 years old to have up to an ounce of ghanja. However, there is a slight catch, so hold off on heading to your friendly neighborhood head shop. In case you aren’t too familiar with state law, marijuana is still technically illegal in Colorado. So the measure that was approved was more of a local opinion than anything else.

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Stupid Ideas / Denver Travel / Balloons / Colorado Travel / → All Tags

Balloon Boy Story Deflates In Face Of Possible Criminal Charges

For the hour or so that the nation stopped on Thursday, dying of anticipation and worry for the boy that supposedly had floated off from his family's backyard in a homemade balloon, we were entertained, titillated, alarmed...but most of all we were duped. It was declared over the weekend, after authorities spoke with the Heene family and after the boy, Falcon, made the statement that "we did this for the show" during an interview with Wolf Blitzer, that the whole incident had been a hoax to gain publicity.

Publicity for what? Well, a reality show of course, although one that doesn't exist and probably never will if felony charges are filed as promised. The Heenes, a storm-chasing family that regularly conducts science fiction-y experiments (hence the balloon) and has been featured on several dramatic episodes of Wife Swap had been shopping around a reality show following their family life; a "Jon and Kate Plus 8," but more like "Richard and Mayumi Plus 3 Boys Living Dangerously." So dangerously, that everyone believed that Falcon was indeed inside the balloon, only to later discover that he was hiding in a box in the garage's attic at home.

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Drink a Beer, Save a Tree in Colorado this Summer

Colorado is home to one of the nation’s highest concentrations of beer geeks, and probably has more nature geeks than anywhere else too, so it’s only natural that the state would hold America’s first solar-powered beer festival.

The 7th Annual Craft Lager Beer Festival comes to Manitou Springs, Colorado on August 8 and 9, and $35 gets you an all-you-can-drink pass to more than 60 craft brews, including lots of locals like Colorado Spring’s Rock Bottom and Pott’s of Fort Collins. Plus, 14 different CO breweries collaborate each year to brew up a few barrels of “Warning Sign,” a super-strong small-batch lager made only for the festival.

And eco-conscious drinkers can do all of this guilt-free, because the theme of this year’s festival is “Drink a Beer, Save a Tree”—all proceeds from the event support efforts to preserve open space and parks in Manitou Springs and Colorado Springs. We'll raise a glass to that.

Related Stories:
· Craft Lager Beer Festival [Official Site]
· Beer festivals coverage [Jaunted]
· Beer travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Craft Lager Brew Festival]