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Before I ever stepped foot inside Colorado, I was in awe of it ... because it has just about every West Coast fast food chain I would ever want to eat at, but is not actually on the West Coast. It's got Wahoo's Fish Tacos (despite not being remotely close to a body of water), it's got Carl's Jr., it's even got Ruby's Diner.

And then after college, when I was still uber ambitious about my continual learning, I spent a month or two reading all the Jack Kerouac I could get my hands on. He makes Denver sound like an absolute paradise.

I visited Colorado for the first and only time during a road trip covering six states in the summer of 2009. We flew into Denver and drove through South Dakota and Wyoming from there, so I didn't really get to spend much time in Denver or Colorado, even.

Denver strikes me as a very outdoorsy, athletic city. There were some serious mountain bikers at Confluence Park; I almost got run over a few times (sorry, city girl ... don't really know the rules of bike riding and such). We also took the trolley down to the Capitol building, where there was a fair going on and we got tons of samples of granola goodies.

I did, however, have one of the best brunch meals ever at The Corner Office at the Curtis Hotel (1401 Curtis Street). I'd read about it somewhere or another and made a point of stopping there for the strawberry cheesecake waffles (with graham cracker maple syrup). The other dish we had, which no longer seems to be on the menu, was also delicious beyond belief. The best breakfast potatoes I've probably ever had in my life.

As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, "Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven."

 - Jack Kerouac