I recently purchased a book called 60 Hikes within 60 Miles for Denver and Boulder. The book includes 60 parks and paths for hiking, including various skill levels from Easy to Moderately Hard. It's not a comprehensive book of every hiking or walking trail in the Denver region. What I like about the book, though, is that many of the trails are full loops, with little to no backtracking. I prefer loops.
Sixty is an achievable number. I could conceivably hike every trail in the book with a reasonable effort. I'm not going to try to hike 60 trails in 60 days. Instead, the attempt will be to hike all 60 trails over the next few years. I've already hiked some of the trails before. For those, I'll only count them if I hike them again. All hikes will be journalled here, on my blog (at least the first attempt for each), with the assigned label of 6060Denver.
Today was the first day of this journey. Allie and I hiked the trail at Bluff Lake Nature Center. It's a very easy trail, listed as trail #3 (not a ranking), within the Denver (Including Foothills and Plains) section. Though we are in Spring, the area is still a bit bare. There are no leaves on the trees; and the grass and shrubbery are still brown. The day was partly cloudy, with plenty of sun.
We did see a few prairie dogs, including one critter that vocalized very clearly that we should leave him alone. We obliged, though we did take a couple of photos from a distance.
There were also some geese, including this watchman on the side of the trail.
Afterwards, we explored Stanley Marketplace, about a mile West in Aurora, CO. For lunch, we tried the restaurant Annette for brunch. Though the food was good, there were some distracting quirks, such as very small portions for beverages (like, smaller than what one might expect for "child size"), and no refills for iced tea. Main course prices were about right for the quantity and quality of each dish.
