AC

Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of posts from Faust's road trip in June through northern Colorado. My parents are avid CNN watchers, but sometimes what you see on the news doesn't give you the full picture, especially when it comes to tourism. So went one conversation before I started my epic week-long Colorado roadtrip, which included stops in Estes Park, Lyons, Fort Collins and Boulder: "You're heading north of Denver? Isn't that entire area on fire?" Make no mistake: this is one of the toughest fire seasons that Colorado has seen in a long time. High temperatures, combined with extremely dry air and almost no humidity, have produced tinderbox conditions in mountain forests. Colorado has been suffering from a drought all spring, and the abundance of trees that have been decimated by mountain pine beetles doesn't help. As of Sunday morning, newscasters in Denver were following 8 wildfires across the state. I woke up to read that a fire had broken out in Estes...