ADJENTURING

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Digital Nomading Chapter 5: Denver, Colorado

6–8 minutes

In August 2025, I started on a six-month digital nomad trip around the U.S. My plan is to live in different cities for a few weeks to a month, to explore each location more deeply than a normal vacation would allow, and figure out where I want to live long-term.

I’d visited Denver in September last year as one of my first stops on my trip. I decided to come back in January, to see if I enjoy living here in the winter. I’d planned to fully move to Colorado in July of this year, but after spending the month here, I’ve decided to delay my move and extend my digital nomad trip into 2027.

Why I’m Not Planning to Move to Colorado Full-Time

  • I’m spending the same amount of money digital nomading as I am while I was living in one place. Instead of going on a weekend or week-long trip once a month while paying rent, I just spend the whole month living where I want to. Because rent is usually the largest cost, I end up spending roughly the same amount of money in a year.
  • I’m not excited to get a lease, furniture, etc. again. I toured a few apartments in Denver, and felt stressed about the idea of signing a year-long lease and annoyed by all the fees that come with leasing (amenities, parking, utilities, wifi, etc.) The thought of having to buy a mattress, couch, cookware, etc. and move it all into an apartment myself also sounded unappealing.
  • Winters in Denver are much milder than on the East Coast, but some days are still incredibly cold, and I hate the cold. I don’t think I want to live somewhere that gets cold in the winter.
  • I don’t like winter activities here (snowboarding, skiing, XC skiing) as much as the summer activities (hiking). All the winter activities in Denver cost so much money and just feel less fun to me than hiking. Hiking (excluding snowshoeing and XC skiing) is severely limited in the winter and subject to avalanche risk, snowpack, winter weather, etc., which puts a limit on the outdoor activities I can do.

Best Things I Did in Colorado (Winter Edition)

Hiking and Weekend Trips

  • Rocky Mountain National Park: Remains one of my favorite U.S. National Parks.
    • Mills Lake & The Loch: I’ve hiked to these lakes separately during the summer. Going during the winter was a different, and very cool, experience. My favorite part was walking across The Loch (fully frozen over) and seeing the suspended air bubbles in the ice.
  • Breckenridge
    • Sallie Barber Mine Trail: The view was okay (mostly in the forest, not many open views of the surrounding mountains), but I enjoyed the workout and the wintery landscape.
  • Telluride
    • Priest Lake & Trout Lake: Went for a short XC ski here after taking a first-timer lesson. The trails are well-maintained (and free) and the surrounding area is very beautiful.
    • Jud Wiebe Memorial Trail: Short, steep trail that leads to a viewpoint over Breckenridge town and the mountains. The trail was icy and muddy in the winter, but the views are still really nice on a sunny day.

Exploring the city

  • Denver Art Museum: The Denver Art Museum seriously punches above its weight and level of fame. My favorites were the chair exhibit (chairs made of uncommon materials), the Asian art exhibit, and the Colorado and mountain-west centered exhibit. The museum is normally very expensive ($30), but I went on a Free First Tuesday, so admission was free. I spent over 3 hours at the museum and still felt like there was more to see.
  • Movement Climbing Gyms: I got a 30 day membership at Movement and visited several gyms in the area. As a beginner climber (this is my second full month climbing), the grading difficulty and crowd factor across gyms was very different. The people who work at all of these locations were very nice and the facilities (weight room, working space, bathrooms) were decent throughout the gyms.
    • Golden: My base climbing gym for the month. On the smaller end for size of the bouldering space, top rope area was larger. Grading was 2nd hardest of the gyms, I felt like there were a higher than usual number of holds I couldn’t reach at all without a serious technique upgrade.
    • Boulder: Only visited once and for 20 minutes before leaving. The bouldering area is really small, and on the day I visited, they were resetting the routes, so the number of open routes was even lower than usual. The grading was by far the hardest of the Denver area gyms, I struggled a bit to climb a V0.
    • Englewood: My favorite of the Denver area gyms. It’s absolutely massive, so the climbing wall doesn’t feel too crowded, even at ‘peak’ hours. The weights area has six racks, and they all look brand new. This gym had the easiest grading of the gyms but what I really appreciated was that there was a good variety and a ton of interesting beginner routes to try.
    • RiNo: This gym had the second easiest grading system and was surprisingly large for being located in central Denver. There were a solid number of interesting beginner routes to try. My only complaint was that most of the routes ended at the very top of the wall or close to the top of the wall, which felt slightly more inaccessible as a beginner.
  • Rocky Mountain Lake Park: Good place to go for a run and see cute dogs, nice views of the Rockies.
  • Berkeley Lake Park: Lots of ducks and geese, a bit less highway noise than Rocky Mountain Lake Park, and another place to see cute dogs.

Food

Restaurants

Bakeries

  • Gold Mine Cupcakes (Golden): The cake part of the carrot cake cupcake was really good, the icing was too sweet.
  • Creature Comforts Cafe (Boulder): Good black sesame cookie. Didn’t like the sandwich.
  • La Huacha (Golden): Expensive (3 tacos for $16), but the tacos tasted like they did in CDMX. The tres leches was surprisingly good (but too sweet).

Cafes

Dessert

  • Em’s Ice Cream (Multiple locations): Honey lavender flavor was great and people working there are very friendly.
  • Inside Scoop Creamery (Littleton): The coffee chip flavor was fantastic, not too sweet and a good amount of crunch from the chocolate. The pumpkin oreo tasted exactly like pumpkin and was also not too sweet.
  • Dante’s Serious Ice Cream (Multiple locations): Black sesame flavor was one of the best ice creams I’ve ever had.

Conclusion

I went to Denver in January to see whether I’d enjoy it during the winter and if I wanted to live there year-round. Currently, I don’t think I do, and plan to continue digital nomading for the near future.

What’s next?

I’m heading to Carlsbad Caverns and Guadalupe National Park to do some hiking for a weekend, then to San Diego for a month. Excited for the warm weather and to visit a city I’ve never been to before!

Read about my experiences digital nomading in other cities here:

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