22 Years of Love Celebrated in McCook, Nebraska It’s no secret that I have a little soft spot for Nebraska. I didn’t grow up there and didn’t even visit until 2019. However, I’ve been going back every year since. Why? First, despite growing up thousands of miles west of Nebraska, the small towns there remind me of the one where I grew up; a rural, agricultural town, where everyone gave
We finally won the Casa Bonita lottery and got the email after nearly a year on the list. For those who don’t know, the only way to get a reservation at Casa Bonita is to be on the waiting list. You cannot, and I am emphatically writing this, you cannot walk in without a reservation! Let’s rewind about 40 years, to Ryan’s Colorado childhood. Okay, maybe 45 years. Ryan is
I’ve always had a soft spot for Durango. As I wrote in my recent post about our April visit, this was a return to the town after five years. It was good to be back. Since I was there for HeidiTown Consulting at IN THE GAME, a conference by Downtown Colorado, Inc., I was busy hosting luncheons and presenting, but I still wanted to touch on some highlights downtown. We
We have been attending a Keystone Festival every summer since 2014, so I know a thing or two about these events. The 1st reason to attend one of the events is that they are FREE. That’s right, anyone can walk through the village during the four ticketed festivals to enjoy live music and the festive ambiance. A key to Keystone Festivals is that it’s “choose your adventure” when it comes
Five years had passed since we were last in Durango, and that’s a long time not to have visited one of my favorite Colorado towns. This month, it was for IN THE GAME, a conference by Downtown Colorado, Inc. I was hosting a Dine Around Session and speaking at the event, so this was a super professional trip for me. Ryan and Fritzi tagged along as it’s a seven-hour drive
For more than twenty years, we had a family cabin outside of Fairplay and some months, we’d go up twice. So, I have driven Highway 285 many times. However, that cabin has been sold for several years, and I am not visiting Southwest Colorado nearly as much as I used to. Therefore, when we drove Hwy 285 on the way to Durango earlier this month, I’d forgotten how lovely this
This was our third trip to Snowmass, and I have finally discovered that Snowmass is Aspen. Yep, Snowmass does not have its own address. It is a part of Aspen. Now that I know, the restaurant prices make more sense. I hadn’t noticed extraordinarily high prices here before inflation, but now they are a little painful. However, on this visit, we found a few ways to make Snowmass an affordable
As a speaker, I talk a lot about town assets, and I’m referring to those things that you take for granted because it’s part of the everyday scenery. For example, I feel that many Coloradans take sunshine for granted. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest where it was rainy a lot of the time. The sun that shines through my bedroom window nearly every morning is something I never
I’m going to write a series of “small town articles.” I won’t be highlighting the usual Colorado towns that appear on all the “hot” Rocky Mountain town lists. While I love those too, for good reasons, these are the kind of small towns that do not come with built-in nightlife. These are types of communities where the nightlife consists of a knitting club gathering at the local brewery. I have
Here’s the thing… there are “no best views” in Colorado because they are all great! I name a few in this post, but there are so many more (I even have pictures of a lot that I couldn’t share because I don’t have three days to write this post, and you don’t have three hours to read this post). By the way, these are views you can see mostly by
