state by state speak your mind about...colorado

[Arugula Latte]

37. I've been there many times, lived there for a summer, and I'm mixed on it.

Parts of it are spectacular, but I'm always glad to leave and get back to the coast. The climate/elevation combo is so harsh. I feel like a parched piece of leather when I'm there. It just dehydrates me completely, and I feel like crap. Also, the Denver area is brown and frankly kind of ugly for much of the year. The eastern half of Colorado is ugly, flat and largely treeless. Also, I hate being completely landlocked there with no ocean to escape to. I was starting to go a little bonkers by the end of the summer we lived there. (I know I'm a little extreme in my reaction.)

On the more positive side, the view of the front range as you're approaching Denver from the east (the airport is out in the boonies) is pretty awesome. It couldn't be more clear that the plains abruptly end and the Rockies start there.

We lived in the mountains outside of Denver and frankly there people scared me. A lot of them seemed like rightwing survivalist types. Boulder is cool and a pretty college town, and the city of Denver is pretty liberal as a whole. Colorado Springs/Castle Rock is a scary area with the four Cs: conservatives, christians (fundies), cowboys and cadets. ... I'm not a sports person, so I don't really like the sports-obsessed culture in Colorado.

The climate is insane. It can snow in June, then melt and be hot the next day. It can start snowing in early September, like, the first week of September. As I said, insane.

I was told before we moved there for the summer that we would fall in love and never leave the state. In reality, I was so eager to go.