Customer Reviews

The Insiders' Guide to Boulder and Rocky Mountan National Park--4th Edition

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First, the good news. This book does contain plenty of useful information. If you're looking for a guide that focuses on Boulder, Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park (as opposed to a general Colorado book), it may be worth getting.

Now, the bad news: this book will not actually help you find any of the attractions that the authors describe. For some mysterious reason, they did not seem to consider that it might be useful to include some maps showing where everything is.

The book has a grand total of two (2) maps: a very general highway map of the Denver area, and a very general major-street map of Boulder. Neither has a key to any of the hotels, restaurants, shops or attractions mentioned in the book. I kept flipping through the pages looking for the detailed map of Downtown Boulder, or any map at all of Estes Park or Rocky Mountain National Park. Unfortunately, they just don't exist--to find anything, or to plan an excursion, you'll need a different book.

Other guidebook series (such as Moon or Lonely Planet) generally do a better job providing usable maps than the Insiders' Guide. But even the Insiders' Guide for the Oregon Coast, for example, has enough maps to get by. But Insiders really dropped the ball on Boulder. Hopefully they'll pick it up for the next edition. If they can find it.

In a nutshell, if you want a book that really gives you a great feel for Rocky Mountain National Park you won't be pleased with this publication at all. The title of the book would lead one to believe that this book has a good portion of it devoted to RMNP - not so by any means. The book has 12 pages devoted to RMNP vs. nearly 300 for Boulder and about 40 more for Estes Park which is entrance town on the east side of RMNP. Estes Park is NOT part of RMNP so if the author was combining the two with that kind of impression then a gigantic error was made. If you're purchasing this book with the idea that you'll be getting a comprehensive book on the park then look elsewhere, for example the RMNP website page from the National Park Service. That site easily gives the same information along with a nice map, camping information, hikes of varying ability levels, etc. You can get that for free on the website and be far more informed. I'm a frequent visitor at RMNP and know the park quite well. I was hoping this book would give me even more information on parts lesser known that I might enjoy venturing in to. I could easily have written 11 pages about RMNP and provided you with oodles more information and would have provided you with a much more "insider" view of the park - really - no exaggeration.

I agree with another reviewer that notes regarding the number of interesting things in Boulder, but that there's no map to really help you get an idea of how to go about planning a good trip there. We now have GPS to help us navigate easily with the addresses given to get us where we want to go, but someone who's not familiar with the area, say nearly everyone purchasing the book, might want to plan a day in a certain region of the city and without a decent map of the city that would be difficult to do.

Overall, not pleased with my purchase at all, but literally paid less for it than a 6" Subway sandwich and got free shipping since I'm a Prime Member so it's not worth returning. I'm sure I can glean something out of it here or there, but it will most likely collect dust on my bookshelf unless I can find someone to give it away to.

Bought this for a recent trip to Boulder/CoSprings after looking at many different regional travel books. This was by far the best one.