Colorado Road and Recreation Atlas (Benchmark Atlas) Paperback – January 1, 2011

I am not entirely sure when I first learned about Colorado wine country, but can assure you that without this Benchmark road and recreation atlas, I never would have dreamt of visiting there. Or spent the night at the Colorado National Monument overlooking Grand Junction. Or driven the Million Dollar Highway. Or enjoyed a picnic lunch near Molas Pass (10910 feet) while marveling at the snows coating the high peaks in the distance. Or driven Douglas Pass Road en route to Dinosaur – through Grand Valley, up and over the Book and Roan Cliffs, over Douglas Pass (8268 feet), and along West Douglas Creek to the Canyon Pintado National Historic District.These routes, they are light years different than crossing Colorado on Interstates 70 and 25, an entirely new way to see the western half of the state, which is far less populated than the Greater Denver metropolitan area and the larger urban centers along the Front Range, like Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greely, and Boulder. Not the hectic crowds of Rocky Mountain National Park, or the luxury ski resorts of Telluride, Aspen, Breckenridge, Vail, or Steamboat Springs. We’re talking places like Craig here, and Fruita, and Rangely. God’s country. BLM land as far as the eye can see. Native American sites and headwaters of major rivers like the Colorado, Yampa, and Rio Grande.The thing about Benchmark Maps is that, unlike Google Earth or other satellite based mapping applications, the staff at Benchmark actually VISIT the places they include on the hundreds of detailed, full color pages of each road and recreation atlas. They walk the trails. They sleep in the parks. They rumble along the gravel roads and use 4x4 vehicles to go deep into the forests, deserts, and high elevation places that make Western states like Colorado so special.And the effect on you, the driver, is to feel a sense of confidence when you travel with these guides in your vehicle. It is so unlike a smartphone app, it’s not even funny. These are as good as USGS quad maps (minus the topographical details), but with recreation and roads in mind. They think of things like wineries, and distilleries, and historic hotels and spas and hot springs and so much more. I cannot recommend this resource highly enough. You will never see the Rocky Mountain West the same way again!

This atlas, like all the Benchmark atlases, is simply perfect and necessary if you ever plan to get off major routes. It gives you all the paved roads in an area, not just the major ones, and the important dirt roads, and, unlike AAA maps, it does a nice job distinguishing between paved and unpaved (nobody's perfect in that regard). If you have googlemaps, get this volume anyway--it gives you a sense of context and overview and allows you to compare alternate routes easily. I use it to guide my cycling, and it's a godsend for finding secondary routes and back roads. It has a very few city insets, but it won't really work as an in-city driving guide. Graphics are excellent--easy on the eyes, very easy to read, pages aren't overloaded with detail. It really has no competition. I use and need googlemaps too, for zooming in for that super-detailed view and for measuring mileages.

Got this for a road trip in CO, and it was just what I was looking for. The landscape maps are clear, colorful, and easy to read. I like knowing what the landforms and wildlife/recreation areas are as we pass through an area. The major peaks, formations and passes are named, with elevations. Can't judge the accuracy of the smaller roads because we stayed on main highways, but all the side roads we passed on the main roads seemed to be on the map. It's too bulky to bring the whole book if we're just going to just one area of the state (e.g., Boulder/Denver), but I could see copying some of the maps for anticipated side trips. The few city maps are not very detailed, so I have paper folding maps for those we visit regularly.

We use this book for cross-country dual sport motorcycling, both planning new routes, and riding them. Because it's large pages give detailed context that a gps screen can't, I carry this book even if I'm following a TAT, CO BDR, or similar GPS track.As you read the reviews here, notice how often people mention dirt roads, back country travel, camping, etc. The editors here have taken the time not just to put the dirt roads in the right place, they generally identify (with bolder lines, and road numbers) the important dirt roads, the ones that go somewhere. This attention to detail sets this book apart from its competitors (CO Atlas and Gazetteer [red], and the Roads of Colorado [blue] are the others).

I have not yet taken this atlas out on the road to test for accuracy. I spent about an hour last night thumbing through the pages. The layout is intuitive. The color scheme for the map elements is very easy to read. The indexes and "points of interest" lists are very comprehensive. I will update this review after I have had a few trips with this atlas. So far I would highly recommend this book for trip planning and exploring Colorado. I can't give this a 5 star rating without testing it out on the road first.

Benchmark Atlases are, in my opinion, the most detailed and easy to read atlases. Other brands I've seen are less expensive, but Benchmark's detailed maps include lots of forest service roads, and rural roads. I mainly use this as an adjunct to BLM 1:100k maps for off road navigation, and back road exploring. I dont use the lists of recreation sites in the book, and those lists are not all inclusive. This is a great purchase for an out of state visitor/traveler, and also for a resident that wants to explore the state a bit more.

Extremely useful atlas for traveling the roads of Colorado. In this day of universal GPS you don't need maps as much as you used to but in Colorado's mountains your iPhone isn't always working and a good atlas is a necessity. This one has regional and close-up maps and we never had a problem finding our way around. It's also nice that each regional map has a list of interesting sites that you can check out. We brought another fold-out map but it just didn't have the detail that this one did and so was almost useless.

The map showed the detail I required however there are problems all roads are shown to scale and are at times difficult to make out. All roads are shown in red making difficult to know what type of road they are. the frontage roads ie the roads that run parallel to the Interstates are not always shown..

I bought this as I hope to move from the UK to Colorado in the near future - I must say that this is by far the best map of Colorado I could find anywhere in the UK.The map is very detailed and very accurate. The item arrived on time and well packaged. Would recommend to anyone.Brad

Excellent book and fast delivery.

Sarà che non sono abituato a questo genere di "Maps", però mi sembra un po' dispersiva nei contenuti, ma probabilmente devo ancora comprenderla pienamente!

Artikel wie beschrieben.Preis/Leistung toll.Schnelle Lieferung.Optimal zur genauen Routenplanung.Empfehle zusaetzlich noch eine Grossraumkarte zu kaufen um den besseren Überblick für den Gesamttrip zu behalten.