Estes Park Beyond the Park: Things to Do Outside RMNP

Most people treat Estes Park as a bed and a gas station on the way into Rocky Mountain National Park, and that is a mistake — especially now that the park's timed-entry permits sell out weeks ahead from late May through mid-October. The town of 6,000 sits at 7,522 feet in a broad valley ringed by the granite of Lumpy Ridge and the 14,259-foot bulk of Longs Peak, and it can fill two or three days without a permit: a hotel that inspired The Shining, a tram, a mountain coaster, a lake with a marina, county and Forest Service trails that see a fraction of the Bear Lake crowds, three breweries, and — from mid-September to mid-October — a few thousand elk that treat the golf course as their own. If you already have our RMNP hiking guide, think of this as the other half of the trip.

Start at the Stanley Hotel. F.O. Stanley, the steam-car millionaire, opened this white Georgian pile above town in 1909, and in October 1974 Stephen King spent one night in Room 217 as the last guest before the winter closure — and left with a novel. The hotel leans into it: the tours (about $30, an hour each) come in Historic, Ghost and Shining flavors, plus a Vault whiskey tour through what the hotel calls Colorado's largest whiskey collection and a 40-minute one on the Frozen Dead Guy, the Nederland cryonics legend the hotel adopted in 2023. The hedge maze planted on the front lawn in 2015 is free to wander, as are the lobby, the veranda and the view of Longs Peak from the steps. A mile west, the Stanley Home Museum is F.O. and Flora's own 1904 summer house, restored and opened for guided tours of eight people at a time; it is the quiet side of the story and books out days ahead in summer.

Get above town. The Estes Park Aerial Tram has climbed Prospect Mountain since 1955; it closed in 2023 after the founding family's last owner died, was bought and reopened in 2024, and now runs daily from early May to November 1 ($18 adults, $12 kids, five minutes each way). The summit has a café, tame chipmunks and the best panorama of the Continental Divide and the Estes Valley you can get without hiking. For a different kind of altitude, the Mustang Mountain Coaster on Dry Gulch Road, a couple of miles northeast of downtown, is a gravity coaster through the ponderosa pines with you on the brake — $25 a ride, $40 for three, and the second ride is always faster.

Spend a half day at Lake Estes. The reservoir on the east edge of town is where locals actually go. The paved 3.75-mile Lake Estes Trail circles it, flat enough for strollers, with Longs Peak and Lumpy Ridge in view the whole way; the marina on the north shore rents kayaks, paddleboards, pontoon boats and bikes from May to mid-September, and there is an accessible fishing pier at Fisherman's Nook. The Big Thompson below Olympus Dam is a year-round tailwater full of browns and rainbows — Kirks Flyshop on Elkhorn Avenue will rig a beginner in an hour. For whitewater, Rapid Transit Rafting runs day trips on the Cache la Poudre, Colorado's only Wild and Scenic river, with a shuttle from town.

Hike where the permits aren't. Two miles southeast of town off US 36, Hermit Park Open Space is a 1,362-acre former Hewlett-Packard company retreat that Larimer County bought in 2007. A per-vehicle day pass buys a trail system almost nobody outside the Front Range knows about; the classic is Kruger Rock, 3.4 miles round trip with 900 feet of gain to a short scramble onto a granite knob with Longs Peak, Mount Meeker and the Twin Sisters lined up across the valley. On a July Saturday when Bear Lake's lot filled at 5 a.m., you will share this summit with a handful of people, and the county's rustic cabins and campsites here are the cheapest beds near Estes in summer. Six miles farther east on US 36, the free Lion Gulch Trailhead climbs three miles along a creek to Homestead Meadows, a National Historic District of eight abandoned 1889–1923 homesteads slowly leaning into the grass. Wrecked by the 2013 flood and rebuilt in 2017, it makes a 7-to-10-mile day, best in June wildflowers or October aspen.

Drive the back roads. Devils Gulch Road (County Road 43) leaves the north end of town and switchbacks down to the hamlet of Glen Haven, seven miles out, where the Glen Haven General Store has baked enormous cream-cheese-frosted cinnamon rolls since 1981 — gone by late morning on weekends, so order the day before for six or more. It's open daily from May into September and Friday–Monday in October, and the drive, with elk in the meadows along the creek, is half the point. Then take Colorado 7 south on the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway: 20 minutes from town, just before Allenspark, the Chapel on the Rock (Saint Catherine of Siena Chapel, 1936) sits on a granite outcrop below Mount Meeker exactly as the postcards show it, free and open 10 to 4 with a small heritage center and coffee shop. Pope John Paul II hiked here in 1993. Keep going and the byway runs 55 miles through Ward and Nederland with the Indian Peaks on your right.

Learn how the town happened. The Estes Park Museum on 4th Street is free, open daily, and better than a small-town museum has any right to be — Isabella Bird, the Earl of Dunraven's attempted land grab, and the 1982 Lawn Lake flood that put six feet of water through Elkhorn Avenue. On select summer Fridays it also opens the Historic Fall River Hydroplant, the 1909 plant Stanley built to light his hotel, preserved with its original generators. North of town, MacGregor Ranch is a working 1873 cattle ranch whose homestead museum (June–September) still has the family's furniture in the rooms, with Lumpy Ridge's Twin Owls directly above the meadow. Downtown deserves an unhurried evening: the Riverwalk follows the Big Thompson behind the Elkhorn Avenue shops, Performance Park stages free summer concerts, and the Donut Haus on Moraine Avenue has been the morning line since the 1970s.

Eat and drink like you live here. Bird & Jim on Moraine Avenue is the restaurant to book: a chef-driven Colorado menu — elk sirloin, smoked pheasant chowder, Front Range trout — sourced from named farms, with a patio pointed straight at the park. The Rock Inn Mountain Tavern on Highway 66 is the local answer to the tourist steakhouse, a 1937 log dance hall with a stone fireplace and live music most weekends. For beer, Rock Cut Brewing has a dog-friendly patio and a rotating food truck, Lumpy Ridge Brewing pours in a converted gas station on the south side of town, and The Barrel, an outdoor beer, wine and spirits garden on Moraine Avenue with dozens of Colorado taps, is where a hiking day ends. Snowy Peaks Winery next door pours Colorado-grown wines, and Kind Coffee on the river is the morning stop.

Time it around the calendar. The Rooftop Rodeo, a PRCA rodeo running since 1908, takes over the Events Complex July 6–11 in 2026; the Longs Peak Scottish-Irish Highland Festival marks its 50th year September 11–13 with caber tossing, pipe bands and jousting; and Elk Fest in Bond Park (October 3–4) celebrates the rut with bugling contests. The rut itself is the best reason to come — from mid-September into mid-October, 2,000 to 3,000 elk move into the valley, and the bulls bugle and spar across the golf course, the lakeshore and the Stanley's lawn every evening while the aspens turn. Bring a long lens and stay 75 feet back. Winter is the sleeper: Trail Ridge Road is shut, the crowds are gone, the Stanley is at its atmospheric best, and a July room goes for a third of the price. Base yourself in town or at the family-oriented YMCA of the Rockies on the west side, give it three nights, and save the park permit for one of them.