The Peak to Peak Highway belongs to the mountains, but this point is on the plains northeast of Denver, near Brighton and Todd Creek, where the land is flat enough to see the whole Front Range in a single glance. On a clear day the wall of the Rockies stretches across the western horizon for a hundred kilometres, with the snowy summits of Longs Peak and Mount Evans standing out, and the wide sky is the real feature of the place.
This is farm country, once a huge cattle range and then irrigated by ditches that brought snowmelt out of the mountains. Sugar beets, corn and vegetables grew here, and Brighton still holds a local festival around its strawberries in the summer. The South Platte River, a wide shallow stream with cottonwoods along its banks, curves through, and the old irrigation ditches still run beside the roads in places.
Nearby Barr Lake State Park is one of the best places in Colorado for birds. The big reservoir, ringed with cottonwoods, hosts great blue herons, pelicans and a good number of bald eagles, which nest there. A paved loop around it lets you walk or cycle, and the park's nature centre is in a barn at the edge. Not far to the southwest, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge occupies land once used to make chemical weapons and is now a wildlife sanctuary, with a herd of bison, prairie dogs and deer. It is a fascinating example of land that turned from military to wild use.
The riding is of the straight, open kind, on county roads laid out in a grid and running dead straight for miles, with the mountains in front. The wind can be strong and gusty, and thunderstorms in summer can build fast, with hail. There is almost no shade, and the sun is fierce at altitude, which is about 1,500 metres here. A grain elevator or a distant windmill is the only landmark.
Brighton has fuel, supermarkets and a range of Mexican restaurants and diners, and the airport is not far, which makes this a convenient place to start or finish a trip to the high country. Evening light is the best, when the mountains turn pink and purple and the plains glow gold.