Review by Ed Quillen
Colorado – June 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
Colorado’s Best – The Essential Guide to Favorite Places
by Bruce Caughey and Doug Whitehead
Published in 2000 by Fulcrum
ISBN 1-55591-435-7
GUIDEBOOKS OFTEN ANNOY ME because they limit some of the “thrill of discovery,” and besides, they can encourage more people to visit places that I prefer to remain uncrowded. Another annoyance is a “top 10” list or the like — it’s funny on David Letterman, but rather irrelevant otherwise.
Sometimes you get the idea that it’s now a felony to get lost, to make your own discoveries, or to exercise your own judgment about the merits of various attractions. Why bother, when there are so many authors devoted to saving you from those horrors?
That said, I still found this book quite enjoyable — it’s well-organized and well-written, and in general the authors’ judgments seem sound (a reviewer’s way of saying that I generally agreed with them).
Colorado’s Best is divided geographically, with “Bests” in each section. That makes sense when there are many contenders, as with restaurants or bed-and-breakfasts.
But sometimes the authors seem to be stretching, as with their nomination of Crestone as “Best Spiritual Convergence.” Crestone is the only place north of Sedona, Ariz., which claims to be a spiritual convergence zone — so as far as Colorado goes, it’s also the “worst,” as well as “the most typical.”
The authors put us in their South-Central region. Some of our other bests include Best Religious Shrine (Stations of the Cross at San Luis), Best Old West Town (South Park City at Fairplay), Best Rafting (Arkansas River), Best Single-Track Biking (Monarch Crest Trail), and Best Hot Springs (Mount Princeton).
They throw in some lore and history with each entry. Here’s a sample:
BEST SMALL-TOWN BED-AND-BREAKFAST
You don’t have to be Catholic, or even religious, to stay overnight in this refurbished convent. From the 1930s until 1957, the Sisters of Mercy taught grade school and high school in this two-story historic building. In what looks like a class picture, a photograph of the nuns in their black-and-white habits hangs in a hallway. Today, the local parish runs El Convento as an inn, welcoming travelers for a good night’s rest. Located next to Sangre de Cristo Catholic Church in San Luis, it’s only a block from the trail that leads up to a hill above town following the Stations of the Cross.
Large windows and high ceilings allow light to pour into each of the four spacious rooms on the second floor of this building, built in 1905. With simple, wooden furniture, wood floors and hanging plants, these quiet lodgings feel like home. Two of the rooms include an adobe-style non-working fireplace for a little southwest ambiance. You won’t find a phone in your room, but you can watch TV. Walking down the steep staircase to the first floor in the morning, you smell the coffee brewing and breakfast cooking. Sit down in the dining room to your choice of juice, fruit, cereal, eggs, sausage and toast. To get there, take I-25 south to Walsenburg. Go west on Hwy. 160 to Fort Garland and then south sixteen miles on Hwy. 159 to San Luis. Contact the rectory of Sangre de Cristo Church for reservations. (719) 672-3685.
As the directions indicate, this book must be aimed at metro residents setting out to explore their own state. Colorado’s Best provides decent guidance to some deserving spots and events, like the Boggsvile historic site near Las Animas and the Glen Miller Festival in Fort Morgan, that deserve more attention than they get.
So, even if I’ve got a grudge against guidebooks, this one is several notches above the usual. To put this another way, I’m a Colorado trivia buff, and I learned a few new things here.
Plus, I wish I’d had it a year ago on a visit to Cripple Creek. Billboards along the road promised fantastic deals on meals at the casinos, but once in town, I couldn’t find any of those $2.99 steak dinners or 99ยข breakfasts. The “Best Cheap Eats” category provides chapter and verse for finding those bargains — one way we non-players can benefit from gambling in Colorado.
–Ed Quillen
