Byway to the skies

Colorado's Rockies are a land of soaring peaks, wild festivals and gold-rush towns turned idyllic mountain escapes - and through it all runs some of the most dramatic stretches of road in the USA

- Aaron Millar

From the top of Trail Ridge Road - the highest continuously paved road in America (3,731m at its peak) - mountains rose like stone giants all around. The air was thin and dizzying, the tree line lying far below. Up here, in the tundra of Colorado's high peaks, everything felt grander and lighter. I took in a view normally reserved for mountaineers and mountain goats, but in Rocky Mountain National Park even mere mortals like me could gaze upon it with ease. I had found, perhaps, the most spectacular stretch of tarmac in America.

It was a fitting start to a wonder-filled road trip across the state. Colorado has long been my adopted home, after I swapped the streets of London for its mountains ten years ago. I've seen it all in bits, but never in one go. My plan was to travel north to south, following the spine of the Rockies the entire way. So, after one last look, I got back in the car, turned the key and smiled. Road trips don't get better than this.

The base camp for Rocky Mountain NP is Estes Park, so that's where I headed next. I tracked ghosts in the 113-year-old Stanley Hotel, where Stephen King dreamt up The Shining, and hiked to the bare rock summit of Estes Cone a well-kept local secret - screaming a primal roar as I reached the summit, the plains shimmering below like an ocean in summer heat. My guide, Bob Chase, a Rocky Mountain veteran, recognised that roar and smiled.

"There's something about being up here that's special," he said. "It's humbling, and it's good to feel that sometimes."

I smiled back. That feeling of being humbled by the mountains; of being small and insignificant but at the same time part of something vast and profound - that's what Colorado is all about. That's why you go.