Flat, Paved and Close to Home: Walking Routes in Northern Colorado

Most walking advice for people past sixty is useless because it skips the only questions that matter. Is it flat. Is it paved. Where do I park. Is there a bathroom.

Here is the Northern Colorado answer, with those questions treated as the point.

The Poudre River Trail

The long one. Paved, gentle grades, and mostly separated from road noise and traffic lights, which is the feature that makes it worth the drive.

Be careful with the mileage, because two different trails get called the Poudre. The Poudre River Trail organization describes more than twenty paved miles running from Island Grove Regional Park in Greeley out to Highway 392 in Windsor. The City of Fort Collins separately publishes a Poudre Trail of about twelve miles inside Fort Collins. They connect in pieces and the network is still being built. If somebody tells you it is a different number of miles than you read somewhere else, you are both probably right about a different section.

Trailheads worth knowing, with what is actually there:

• Island Grove Regional Park, Greeley, near 600 North 14th Avenue. Restrooms, drinking fountains, plenty of parking, and real shade from mature trees. The best first-time starting point on the Greeley end.
• Poudre Ponds, on 35th Avenue north of West F Street in Greeley. Restroom available, but no running water. Worth knowing before you plan a long one.
• Rover Run Dog Park, 4949 F Street, Greeley. Three fenced acres, benches, and a portable restroom. Daylight hours only.
• Eastman Park, Windsor, at Eastman Park Drive and Seventh Street. Indoor restrooms, fountains, picnic shelter, generous parking. The trail runs along the south edge.
• River Bluffs Open Space, the recommended access if you are coming off Interstate 25. Exit 262 at Highway 392, east about a mile and a half, north on County Road 3, east on County Road 32E.

One caution on Signature Bluffs Natural Area: the paved trail passes it, but the trails going into the natural area itself are dirt.

Sheep Draw Trail, Greeley

About four miles, concrete surface, genuinely flat. It runs from the Poudre River Trail a quarter mile north of F Street and 59th Avenue down to the 9000 block of 18th Street.

Parking: McCloskey Natural Area trailhead at 1212 71st Avenue is the easiest, roughly a quarter mile south of 10th Street. You can also pick it up from Rover Run Dog Park or the Signature Bluffs trailhead at 629 North 71st Avenue.

Loveland's loop

The City of Loveland publishes thirty-one miles of recreation trail, including a twenty-one mile loop along the Big Thompson River corridor that goes most of the way around the community. Named sections include the Big Thompson River Trail, Civic Center, Boyd Lake, North, Westside, Centerra and East Big Thompson.

Two details that make this the most walkable system in the region for our purposes. The trails are open daily from 6 in the morning until 10:30 at night, and there are quarter-mile markers installed along the way. If you have ever been told to build up to a mile and had no idea how far you had gone, that is the trail to use.

Trailhead parking includes Centennial Park at 977 West 1st Street, Fairgrounds Park at 700 South Railroad Avenue, and Seven Lakes Park at 1975 Park Drive. The city does not publish restroom detail per trailhead. 970-962-2727 will get you a person.

Some sections are dirt and a few short connections put you on a road, so the surface is not uniformly paved end to end.

Fort Collins

The city publishes its paved trails plainly, which is a gift. Spring Creek Trail runs from Spring Canyon Community Park east to the Poudre River, with restrooms and water at Cottonwood Glen, Rolland Moore, Spring and Edora Parks. Parking at Spring Canyon Community Park, 2626 West Horsetooth Road; Rolland Moore Park, 2201 South Shields; and Edora Park, 1420 East Stuart.

The Poudre Trail section in Fort Collins has restrooms and water at Lee Martinez, Old Fort Collins Heritage and Buckingham Parks.

Also published: Fossil Creek Trail, the Power Trail, the Mason Trail, and the Long View Trail, which runs about four miles from Hilldale Drive down to West 57th Street in Loveland. That last one is an actual walking connection between two towns, which surprises people.

The seasonal detail nobody mentions

Greeley's parks page states that many playground areas have restrooms available May 1 through September 30. That is a real constraint on a winter walk, and it is not the sort of thing you want to discover a mile from the car.

Loveland's Boyd Lake State Park is worth a mention with the same caution attached. It is at 3720 North County Road 11-C, open 5 in the morning to 10 at night, and it charges vehicle entry. As of this year the lake is closed to boating because the water is low, though walking and swimming are unaffected. The park's own page does not publish trail lengths or surfaces.

Two free walking groups, both real

This was the best thing we found, and almost nobody knows about it.

Walk with a Doc, Windsor. Third Saturday of every month at 9 in the morning, meeting at the Ditch #2 Trail entrance behind the Community Recreation Center at 250 North 11th Street. If the weather is bad they move into the recreation center lobby, which is the detail that tells you these are serious people. Free. Led by a physical therapist. 970-674-3500.

Walk with a Doc, Fort Collins. First Saturday of every month at 9, meeting in the west parking lot of the Fort Collins Senior Center, 1200 Raintree Drive. Run through Banner Health. A short health talk from a local physician, then a guided walk, open to all ages and abilities. This chapter is listed as beginning in September of this year, so it is brand new, and worth a confirming call to 970-810-2680.

There is no chapter in Greeley or Loveland. If you want one, the organization takes applications.

Getting there if you do not drive

Weld County lists two transportation options for adults 60 and older: 60+ Ride at 970-352-9348 and RideNoCo at 970-514-3636. If the reason you have not walked a trail in three years is that nobody was going that direction, start with those numbers.

The pharmacist's note

We are pharmacists, and this is the part we would say across the counter.

Northern Colorado is about five thousand feet up and the air is dry. You lose water breathing here in a way you do not at sea level, and you lose it without feeling thirsty. Layer on the medications that a lot of people over sixty-five take every morning, and an ordinary walk changes character.

Diuretics for blood pressure or heart failure mean you started the walk with less fluid than you think. Beta blockers hold your heart rate down, which mutes the signal your body normally sends when you are working too hard. Medications with drying side effects, and there are many, including some for bladder control, allergies, sleep and mood, reduce how well you sweat, and sweating is how you cool off. Some diabetes medications change how your body handles fluid. A few blood pressure medications make standing up from a bench a different proposition than it used to be.

None of that argues for staying home. It argues for knowing which of your own prescriptions is on that list, carrying water you actually drink rather than water you carry, and picking the shaded trailhead in August rather than the exposed one.

Take your medication list to whoever fills it and ask which ones matter in heat. It is a short conversation and it is the sort a pharmacist would rather have in July than in an emergency room.

None of this is a reason to stop or change a prescription on your own. Any change goes through the person who prescribed it.

Why we bothered

Haven Health was started by the pharmacists at Good Day Pharmacy. We help people in Greeley, Windsor, Wellington, Eaton, Johnstown and the towns around them work out Medicare. Coverage is what we do, but it is not the point. The point is the mile you walk on a Tuesday.

Bring your medication list when you come see us. We will read it like pharmacists.