The fireworks are packed away, but Denver’s calendar is just hitting full speed. Red Rocks runs three and four nights a week now, the mountain food-and-wine festivals are stacking up, and I-70 is doing its summer-weekend thing. A few things worth your July.
— On the Calendar
Pete’s June Picks
Five nights still on the board:
Event service means your driver stays on site or comes back on a set window. No parking, no surge, no hunting for the car at midnight.
— TIP
The I-70 Tip Most People Learn the Hard Way
If your July has a mountain weekend in it (Breckenridge Food & Wine, a Keystone festival, an Aspen stretch), the drive is the part that goes sideways. Here’s what your driver plans around, and what you can too.
Going up, leave before the wave. Westbound I-70 backs up Friday afternoon and again Saturday from about 8AM to noon. The fix is boring and it works: be past Idaho Springs before 7 AM, or roll out after 1 PM. The Twin Tunnels and the Eisenhower are the chokepoints, and everything stacks behind them.
Coming home, Sunday afternoon is the trap. Eastbound crawls from roughly 2 PM to 7 PM as the whole state drives back at once. Leaving before noon or after dinner turns a three-hour crawl into a 90-minute drive.
Build in altitude margin. A summer run to Breckenridge is a climb of more than 5,000 feet. Hydrate the day before, keep water in the car, and don’t make the first thing you do at elevation the most strenuous.
That’s the whole playbook. A driver who runs I-70 every week already knows which window you’re in before you ask.
— A NEW FACE AT DRIVEDENVER
Meet Ella Martin
A quick introduction. Ella Martin is joining the DriveDenver team in Customer Service and Scheduling. As demand has grown, she’s here to help with the scheduling requests that come in by phone, text, and email, with the same timely, detail-minded service you already know. A Colorado native from Highlands Ranch, Ella is a junior at Southwest Baptist University in Missouri, majoring in physical therapy, and yes, she’s the one in the Bearcat mascot suit on game day. Between semesters she runs customer service as a head cashier, coaches young soccer goalies, and somehow still finds time for us.
Pete has worked alongside her since mid-May, walking her through clients, the schedule, and the technology. He isn’t going anywhere; Ella just means faster answers when you reach out. We hope you meet her soon. Welcome, Ella.
— CHARITY
The Market: One Month Out, and a Tee Time Worth Your Friday
We’ve sponsored The Market, a Denver-area charity, for five years. This year we’re a premium sponsor of their annual golf tournament: Friday, August 7, at Red Hawk Ridge Golf Course in Castle Rock. It’s one month out, and a few sponsorship and playing slots are still open.
If you’d like to play, sponsor, or just hear more about the work The Market does, hit reply. I’ll connect you with
the team running it.
— WHAT’S COMING
A few things worth marking now, while the ride is still easy to
book:
August at Red Rocks. Mt. Joy (August 13-14) and Tori Amos (August 20) are the late-summer nights worth booking the ride ahead for. The big stadium stretch. Noah Kahan at Coors Field (August 8), Zach Bryan at Empower Field (August 13-14), and My Chemical Romance at Coors Field (August 27). Stadium nights book out two to three weeks early, so if you’re coordinating rides, get ahead of it.
Mountain festivals keep going. Keystone Bluegrass & Beer (August 1-2) and Up in the Sky in Aspen (August 7-8) carry the festival season into August. Same I-70 rules apply.
Flying in this month?
Your flight lands. Your driver’s waiting.
Every airport pickup is flight-monitored in real time. Your professional chauffeur adjusts to delays before you land. Meet-and-greet, luggage help, red jacket pickup, and a luxury SUV at the curb.
We wait for you, not the other way around. One text and done.
