The Peak-to-Peak Highway in Colorado is the oldest Scenic Byway in the United States of America, established in 1918. That’s quite a claim. So I was thrilled for us to take this drive south from Estes Park to Black Hawk during the height of fall foliage season. Thank you, Margaret, girlfriend of Drew, for this wonderful recommendation.
The drive is actually not along just one highway but changes from CO Highway 7 to CO Highway 72 and then to CO Highway 119 (north to south).
One of the turns, we completely missed (and I couldn’t find it in the footage later either), which led us to continue down 7 for a while and get some beautiful footage of the South St. Vrain Canyon, which you can watch HERE. We then found our way back through a charming little town on the St. Vrain Creek, which wasn’t even listed on my map.
My critical mind was a bit frustrated that because we only had time to drive the 55-mile (about 80-minute) drive facing mostly south and west before it got dark, which meant we were mostly driving into the sun instead of seeing the vistas lit up by the sun from behind. But watching the finished video, I actually appreciate the accidental feeling of “driving towards the setting sun”. I’d like to take and film this drive again with the sun in my back going north, just to see the difference. Maybe it would be a fun winter drive… because winter is definitely coming…
This is an edited version of all the footage from the drive. I plan to release the full version later.
The featured song in this video is the instrumental version of “Golden Sunrise” by Josh Woodward. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Thank you, Josh!
