Travel

Eldorado Canyon State Park with Kids

Eldorado Canyon State Park is one of our favorite parks in Colorado. The views are beautiful and there is so much to do there. I posted a reel detailing a recent visit there. If you want to see what it looks like, check it out here: Eldorado Canyon State Park

This park is located right outside of Boulder, Colorado. It has the most amazing views of large sandstone cliffs throughout the park. There is a small fee to enter.

And if your kids love rivers as much as mine, they’ll have fun playing in South Boulder Creek which runs throughout the park. There’s also a visitor’s center in the park. It closes at 4 pm so we’ve never actually made it inside on the visitor’s center.

Every time, we’re there, we see tons of people climbing one of over 500 technical rock climbing routes throughout the park.

My kids love climbing the rocky formations in the park. There are so many opportunities throughout the park for littles to do some unstructured climbing and play. One time when we were there. We saw a 3 year old in climbing gear fearlessly climbing with his parents. The family was from Switzerland and just moved to Colorado about a year before. It’s always so fun meeting people from all over the world.

If you park in the first parking lot when you enter the park, there is a bridge in that area that leads to some fun kid-friendly caves to explore and boulders to climb. We spend a great deal in this area when we go. it also has some beautiful views of the creek.


Our favorite trail in Eldorado is the Fowler Trail. This trail has limited parking, but we always manage to find a space. And it had such beautiful views, especially during sunset. You’ll see some of my sunset captures in the reel video above.

Eldorado Canyon State Park

This trail is starts right from the parking lot and is flat and easy for children of all ages.

The first time we went was during winter and it was cold. Everyone complained. I finally convinced them to get out of the car and after a few feet, all of the kids were actively engaged in our hike and happily walking along.

This trail has some cliffs that are beautiful for pictures with sky views. Here’s a photo of our first winter hike there.

This trail also has plenty of rocks to climb and sticks to collect. We always see chipmunks on this trail, which always delights the kids.

The summers tend to be really crowded on the weekends so if you want to avoid the crowds, try going on a week day or getting there early in the day during the busy summer months.

The sunsets there are perfect, and the mountain view hikes and river side trails are both equally beautiful.

Have you been? What’s your favorite thing to do there?

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