Loveland Recreation Trail

Stacie and I were originally planning to go four wheeling today, but it turns out most of the trails near by are still closed for the winter season (we’ve had a lot of late season snow up in the high country this year). We ended up doing a little “urban hiking” instead.

The Loveland Recreation Trail is a paved, urban trail that makes an almost complete loop around Loveland. The trail currently totals ~15.5 miles, and another ~5 miles are planned to complete the loop around Loveland. Go here for more information about the Recreation Trail System.

We drove down to Centennial Park (at Taft Ave and 1st Street) to start our hike.  The far east side of the parking lot is closest to the trail.  From anywhere in the park you can walk north and find the trail, but from the far east end there is a trailhead right off the parking lot.

The trail is a nice, easy walk along the bank of the Big Thompson River.  There are enough trees on both sides to provide a fair amount of shade for most of the trail.

The underpass for 1st Street has a large mural on the wall:

There are several places along the trail where you can get down the the river’s edge, if you wish.  We let Shy-Anne do a little wading at one spot.  She really wanted to go swimming, but I wanted her to be dry when we put her back in the Hummer.

One of the great things about this trail is that most of the time it is separated from the streets by open space, so it almost feels like you are out hiking outside the city.

Every quarter mile there is a marker at the side of the trail so that you can track how far you’ve gone.  We had gone a little bit less than a mile when we got to Barnes/Fairground park.  We walked through the park and then turned around and headed back to Centennial Park and the Hummer.

See all of the pictures: Photo Gallery

Trail Information:
Name: Recreation Trail
Location: Loveland, CO
Length: 2 miles (Centennial Park to Barnes Park and back)
Difficulty: Easy
Map: parks and trails map and bikeways map