re: Colorado, One Week with kids itenerary (flying in)

two 11 year olds would absolutely love Great Sand Dunes National Park in early June. Make sure to stop at the visitor center to get your boards to surf down the dunes. The river will be running through the Dunes then as well, and it's just an incredible place to be at that time. YOu can easily spend all day there.

Mesa Verde is cool to see, but not necessary. YOu need to make reservations ahead of time if you actually want to get close to it.

Raft in Buena Vista on the Ar-Kansas river. It's going to be a lot funner rafting than anywhere else.

Drive from Durango to Ouray. It is breathtakingly beautiful. There's several waterfalls in Ouray you can go visit (Box Canon is the main one), and there's a city pool with hot spring water you can visit that the kids would love as well. The Durango train ride is ok, but the kids are going to get bored on it, especially on the way back, and you'll see beautiful scenery driving anyway. We stopped at a lake along the way to fish, right before Silverton, and stopped several other times on our way to Ouray for pictures and what not. It's just an unbelieveable drive that first time you do it.

If you have time stop in one of the tourist ski towns and do the mountain coasters.
If you can take the pass to Aspen that's also an awesome drive, and seeing Maroon Bells is an easy hike.


So you could land in Denver, do Breckenridge first, drive down to Buena Vista next, then Great Sand Dunes, go west to Durango/Mesa Verde, up to Ouray, then up to Aspen.
Not sure if you can even do that in a week though, and it would be a lot of driving.