Estes Park
Shopping and eating in Estes Park feel tailor made for wandering with no agenda and a growing appetite. The downtown strip is packed with local shops selling mountain souvenirs, cozy clothes, handmade gifts, and just enough kitsch to make you smile, all within easy strolling distance. When hunger hits, you bounce between casual cafés, old school steakhouses, bakeries, and comfort food spots that seem designed for post hike hunger or snowy evenings. It is the kind of town where you grab fudge, drift into a bookstore, smell something good, and accidentally sit down for dinner, and somehow that becomes the best part of the day. Many great ice cream options are available as seen by Scarlett, this was her first ice cream but certainly won’t be her last.
The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park is a grand 1909 mountain hotel best known for inspiring Stephen King’s The Shining after he stayed there during a quiet offseason night. While the movie was not filmed at the Stanley, the hotel’s long hallways, isolated hilltop setting, and eerie calm directly shaped King’s vision of the Overlook Hotel. Today it leans into that legacy with tours, stories, and just enough atmosphere to make you glance twice at the end of the corridor, proving that sometimes the real place is creepier than the movie.
