By John DeFore
Green Right Now

The old-fashioned American road trip — packing the kids up and driving from one motor lodge to the next — may seem less than 100% wholesome these days, what with eco-conscious drivers becoming as sensitive to the amount of CO2 they’re generating as they are to cries of “are we there yet?” from the back seat.

But getting out into the natural world remains one of the best ways to introduce children — and city-dwelling adults, for that matter — to the environment we all want to preserve. And a well planned road trip can provide vacationers with an array of views and experiences that’s stunning enough to make a phrase like “ecosystem diversity” suddenly sound like a tangible good worth fighting for instead of a dry academic concern.

With its wealth of park lands, varied terrain, and caravan-friendly roads, Colorado presents excellent opportunities for this kind of eco-exposure road trip. I loaded up the car recently to see how much I could squeeze into a week or so of vacation time, and was surprised at the result.

Starting in Colorado Springs, my trip began with sights that have been part of summer-vacation itineraries for so many decades that simply showing up might make the most unconventional family feel like the Cleavers. Cave of the Winds, for instance, one of the state’s many natural caverns open to visitors, seemingly encourages its guides to toss around corny banter almost as crusty as the stalagmites on display.

But one seemingly hokey affectation can have a transporting effect: In addition to regular tours, the cave’s operators offer a lantern tour that uses no lighting other than the kind of oil-burning lamps available to the spelunkers who explored the caves in the late 1800s. Paradoxically, limiting visitors’ ability to see makes the tour more involving, attaching a sense of discovery to geological formations that might be taken for granted on the standard tour.

Other well-exploited points of interest in Colorado Springs include Seven Falls and Pike’s Peak, a mountain that isn’t as high as other summits you’ll scale on a thorough Colorado trip (it’s not even in the top 20), but is the site of a scenic cog railway.

The town’s most impressive asset is the Garden of the Gods, a collection of above-ground rock formations whose starkness is reminiscent of iconic landscapes, like Utah’s Monument Valley, generally found farther west. Its craggy red rocks are particularly stunning in the morning sunlight, and the park’s relatively small size makes it perfect for a pre-breakfast hike. (It’s clearly a favorite jogging spot for locals.)

From Colorado Springs I drove north, through the granola-friendly community of Boulder, to Estes Park, a verdant little spot that, with its creekside inns and unpretentious businesses, makes the perfect spot to gather your strength for an expedition into the Rocky Mountain National Park.

The rock star of Colorado’s natural attractions, the RMNP is big and rich enough that whole books tackle it without covering everything one might see and do within. Outdoor enthusiasts could spend weeks here without getting bored, but those wanting to integrate the park into a larger trip can get a sense of it on a scenic drive like the one along Trail Ridge Road, which winds its way up through forest to a treeless tundra offering breathtaking views in all directions. The cold winds whipping around up here (it’s usually 20 to 30 degrees cooler here than in Estes Park) are just the thing to cool you off after a hike through one of the many trails found lower down the mountain range.

Rocky Mountain National Park is an excellent place to pause and consider global climate change. The park’s tundra ecosystem, high on the continental divide, faces imminent and multiple threats from warming temperatures, according to a 2007 report, Climate Change in Rocky Mountain National Park.