Woodland Park sits at 8,465 feet in the Pikes Peak region of Colorado — high enough that the air tastes different, close enough to Colorado Springs that you can be there in twenty minutes, far enough that it feels like another world entirely.
It is one of our favorite places to send guests who need to slow down.
Here is how we would spend a slower weekend there.
Friday Evening
Arrive before dark if you can. The drive up Highway 24 through the canyon deserves to be seen — the way the rock walls close in and then open suddenly into mountain meadow. Let that transition be the beginning of the weekend.
Dinner at a local spot rather than cooking your first night. Woodland Park has a small but good selection of restaurants. Nothing fancy — just food that tastes like somewhere real.
Open the windows when you go to sleep. The night air at altitude is cool even in summer and sleeping in it is its own kind of luxury.
Saturday
Wake without an alarm. This is the most important instruction of the whole weekend.
Coffee before anything else. Slow coffee. The kind where the making of it is part of the morning.
Mueller State Park is fifteen minutes from Woodland Park and is among the most beautiful and undervisited state parks in Colorado. Over 5,000 acres of pine forest, meadow, and Rocky Mountain landscape with trails for every level. Go in the morning before the afternoon clouds build.
The town of Woodland Park has a farmers market on summer Saturday mornings worth wandering through. Local honey, cut flowers, vegetables, baked goods. Buy something you don’t need.
Afternoon: nothing scheduled. Read. Walk. Sit somewhere with a view. Practice the uncomfortable art of unstructured time.
Sunday
The slower version of Saturday. A longer breakfast. A shorter walk. The particular sweetness of a morning that belongs to no one.
Before you leave — drive up toward Pikes Peak even if you don’t summit. The view from the road above treeline is something that recalibrates things. A reminder of scale. Of what was here before and will be here after.
Drive home slowly. Let the weekend last as long as it can.
Ready to experience it for yourself?
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