Colorado: Updates on the fires, vacation tips

— -- 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 Park, closing the Beaver Meadow entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park - where I had just been a few days before. As I'm writing this, Colorado's governor is on the scene at the Waldo Canyon blaze outside Colorado Springs, where Garden of the Gods and Pikes Peak have been closed. At the mountain's base, the tourist town of Manitou Springs has been evacuated (although people were allowed to return to their homes Sunday night).

Concern is high for the Colorado Springs fire, mainly because it's the closest to a heavily populated area. But the fire in High Park, Colorado - an area in the mountains about 15 miles west of Fort Collins - has commanded the most attention, justly. A lightning bolt sparked the fire, the second largest in state history, on Saturday, June 9, and, as of June 24, more than 83,000 acres have burned. Hundreds of people have been evacuated, and 248 homes have been destroyed.

But while the plume of smoke from High Park is visible from Fort Collins, as you can see in this photo taken around sunset on June 23, daily life in the city is still going strong. The city is known for its microbrews and the Colorado Brewers Festival, now in its 23rd year, went off without a hitch. Saturday night in Old Town remained lively, with packed bars and restaurants. Beer tours at New Belgium Brewery, home of Fat Tire and the third largest craft brewer in the country, are full.

During my chat with people who work at the Fort Collins CVB, I was told that the tourist businesses most affected by the High Park fire include the outfitters who run tours on the Poudre River (one of Colorado's major rivers for white-water), and people who run seasonal rental properties out in the mountains. The hotels remain full, as firefighters and evacuees need places to stay (federal, state and local volunteers have been working on the blaze). People who came for outdoor recreation are being directed to other natural areas nearby.

While the fires impacted little of my trip's itinerary this week, I did notice concern for the dry conditions at almost every stop. In Rocky Mountain National Park, we saw several fire trucks on Trail Ridge Road, an alpine tundra environment that opened early this year, due to lack of snowpack.

I asked the firefighters what they were looking for. "Lightning," one guy told me, with a grim look on his face. The High Park fire is not an anomaly; most wildfires in the West begin because of natural electrical strikes.