Golden has a bit of everything a rider wants at the end of a day. It is wedged into a gap where Clear Creek slips out of the Front Range and onto the plains, with flat-topped Table Mountain on one side and Lookout Mountain on the other, so the town feels like it was dropped into a doorway. For a few years in the 1860s it was even the capital of Colorado Territory, until Denver took the title and the weight along with it.
It is better known today for Coors, whose brewery has dominated the east side of the valley since the nineteenth century and still gives the town a faint grain smell when the wind is right, and for the Colorado School of Mines, one of the world's famous engineering colleges. The main street is walkable and pleasant, with a creekside path where kids swim in summer and a good scatter of cafes and restaurants. With about twenty thousand residents, fuel and food are never an issue.
What makes Golden a great base is how quickly the road changes. Within ten minutes of the center, Lookout Mountain Road leaves the suburbs and rises through a string of tight switchbacks to the summit, where Buffalo Bill Cody's grave and a small museum sit with a view over the plains all the way to the Denver skyline. It is a classic Colorado hill climb, narrow and steep with tight bends and a fair number of cyclists to share it with, so patience is rewarded. The wider Lariat Loop Scenic Byway links the mountain with the foothill towns of Evergreen and Morrison, and the old railway grades and canyon roads give you more options than a single day can use.
Heading west, Highway 6 follows Clear Creek Canyon up toward Idaho Springs, a narrow, rock-walled gorge with tunnels and a busy flow of trucks and rafters. In the opposite direction, Golden Gate Canyon rewards early starts with quiet bends through aspen and pine. Mornings are best for all of it. Afternoons bring weekend traffic, summer thunderstorms and, in shoulder seasons, ice in the shade that survives long after the sun has cleared the road in town.