The Taste of Colorado – A Colorado Labor Day Tradition

Experiencing the Taste of Colorado had been on our list of things to do since we moved here to Colorado. Happily, we can now say that we finally made it to the annual celebration for the first time in 2015! I had seen pictures and heard stories about the Taste of Colorado, but it was great to finally experience it firsthand. We had a great time. 

The best part was that there was no entrance fee. It is one of the most popular events in Denver over Labor Day weekend with over 500,000 attending each year. The festival is great for the whole family with such activities as food, music, shopping, rides, face painting, magic, clowns, and puppets.

We checked out their website a couple of weeks before the festival and decided to go on Sunday to see and hear Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. The show was awesome and she still sounds great.  She had everyone up and dancing, especially when she sang “I Love Rock n Roll.” Everyone went nuts, and it was awesome. The best part was seeing even teenagers singing along. That song was popular when we were in high school in the ’80s, and here are teenagers in high school today still singing it.

It was wonderful to see. Sadly she only played for an hour. We would have loved to have sat and listened to her longer. As much as we enjoyed Joan Jett, it would have been nice to have seen Kansas on Friday and Morris Day & The Time on Saturday. Those shows were probably great too.  We just didn’t have time to get down there all three days. Maybe another year, lol.

Besides the concerts, the best thing about the Taste of Colorado was the food. They had everything imaginable there. However, we believe one of the biggest sellers was the huge turkey legs everyone was carrying around. We decided to check it out, but there were about 50-60 people waiting in line, so we moved on. They did look really good though.

I was happy to see that there was a Ford dealer offering freebies and test drives. They even gave us food tickets to use later. It was great. I had been wanting to try an Escape and they had one. Great time to try without the pressure of buying one.  I also enjoyed checking out some of the art vendors. I was amazed at some of the incredible pieces they were selling.

However, the thing that I thought was really cool was what Gene called the human hamster ball. I had a blast watching the kids run around in the multi-colored balls. I don’t know how much it cost, or how many tickets were needed, but they looked like they were having a blast. The other fun ride looked like a trampoline ride, but I couldn’t tell for sure. All I know was that it looked fun.

If you live in Denver and have never been, you should definitely make a point of at least spending a few hours at the Taste of Colorado this year. You will be glad you did. Just make sure to bring cash to buy tickets for food and drinks.

Update 7/12/2021:

The information above is from our visit when we went in2015. Of course, it was canceled last year due to the murdering government in China, but they are doing it again this year in 2021. The dates for this year are Saturday, September 4th to Monday, September 6th. The venue is also different. Not sure if this is due to safety because of the selfish idiots or not, because our Governor lifted all restrictions last week. Either way, the committee in charge of the festival hasn’t announced many details yet. However, they did announce that they will be using a lot of local restaurants, etc. I will come back and update more once they announce more information.  Hopefully, they hurry, as it is only a couple of months away, lol. Here is a link to their website if you want to keep updated yourself. Hope you enjoyed memories from our first visit in 2015.