I spent some time in Boulder which is only an hour away and is also really beautiful. I had fun taking a tour of the Celestial Seasonings tea factory ( a free tour) and also visiting a truly beautiful cafe called the Dushanbe (sp?) tea house, which is a full tea-house that they brought over from Tajikstan. Estes State Park is also nearby and is extraordinarily beautiful, although I visited in springtime and am not sure what the road-access is like in the snowy season.

Great ideas from occ altho the Rocky Mt. National Park (access from Estes Park) may have too much snow. Air is very thin over the passes also re; your little one.

The Denver Museum of Natural Science is always fun and will reopen after Oct. 22, when renovations are finished.. I saw a gorgeous Mongolian Yurt there (I don’t know what the political issues are about removing Yurts from Mongolia)

“DMNS”: http://blog.dmns.org/photos/dmnsorg/default.aspx

And they have an Educational center geared towards kids and hands-on projects.

http://www.dmns.org/main/en/General/Exhibitions/CurrentExhibitions/discoveryZone.htm

I want to secong the Denver museum of natural science.. they have an awesome setup, and you should definitely go see the IMAX while there.. its a good one. :)

I have to put in a word for the Denver Art Museum. Having recently completed a landmark expansion (strikingly designed by architect Daniel Liebeskind), the DAM is a huge museum with something for everyone. And they have lots of excellent programming and activities for kids, so there’ll be plenty for the little one to do and see.

Winter Park is an easy drive from Denver, with lots of outdoor activities in addition to the ski resort there. I second the suggestion to check out Boulder, a hip town (which is actually more like a half hour from Denver) with a pedestrian mall (“Pearl Street”) which is second to none for people watching and window shopping.

For dining, Denver has a surprisingly good variety of Japanese restaurants (there’s an interesting history around the Japanese-American population of Denver). Check out Domo near downtown, which is a “Japanese Country” restaurant and also something of a museum of Japanese culture. If you like vegetarian food I can’t recommend Watercourse highly enough (give it a try even if veggie dining isn’t your usual thing). And Parisi (tucked away in Northwest Denver) has a nice casual not-quite-fast-food atmosphere, and some of the best Italian food this side of Florence (the owner is Florentine and the cuisine is authentic).

Be prepared to fall in love. Denver is a great town!

There are beautiful neighborhoods around Washington Park (in itself beautiful).

El Chapultepec is the O.G. of jazz bars in Denver. There are also a lot of fun bars near the baseball stadium.

If you want to shop, 16th Street Mall is a pedestrian-only section of downtown with lots of relatively unique shops plus the Niketowns of the world (don’t know if they actually have a Niketown, but I think there’s an ESPN store).

denver.org is a great site to see what’s going on.