Colorado’s North West Region is truly a study in contrasts. This land of green mountains and bone-dry desert, glitzy resorts and gritty sagebrush towns, ultramodern petroleum plants and century-old ranches represents nearly everything that Colorado is or ever has been.

I-70 cruises through the modern heart of Colorado, linking the world-class resort playgrounds of Summit County and the Vail Valley with the oil-shale boomtowns further west.

Along U.S. 40, an older but still vital side of the Centennial State survives. Here, ranchers and cowboys follow patterns that have remained unchanged since the 19th century, trailing herds in scenes almost as old as the West.

By the time you approach the Utah line, you may think you have traveled through a time warp; this weirdly beautiful moonscape coughs up dinosaur skeletons hundreds of millions of years old.

People come from all over the world to visit Aspen, whose million-dollar condos, award-winning restaurants, and vigorous cultural scene make it a metropolis in miniature. With such a high profile, the town seems to eclipse little burgs like Craig and Maybell; but what those places lack in international cache, they more than make up for in good ol’ American independence.

Steamboat Springs brings these two strands together, managing to be simultaneously cosmopolitan and provincial; cowboys and vacationing executives routinely brush shoulders on the streets.