Calling on all DL Tour Guides - tell me about the Rockies

Well, you've certainly allowed enough time! So I'm going to recommend two places at either end of the American Rockies: Glacier National Park in Montana, and the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado.

Glacier offers stunning Alpine scenery and is well known for good reason, check it out! Stunning mountains deeply sculpted by glaciation, amazing hiking, deep glacial lakes, mountain goats and grizzly bears (watch your ass there), deep glacial lakes, it should be cool and dotted with wildflowers in July-Aug as it's on the Canadian border and high altitude. Much more amazing than Rocky Mountain National Park, IMHO, if you have to choose between them.

The San Juan subsidary range are at the southern end of the high Rockies, close to the New Mexico border, and those are stunning mountains dotted with charming little towns like Durango and Telluride. I've only been there in fall and this is *exactly* what I saw, I need to go back and really explore those mountains as I haven't seen nearly enough of that region. Definitely primo road trip territory, and BTW if you are sick of mountains and want some desert, the Navajo country and the Shiprock are just south of Durango.

Is Telluride a must see town? Jackson Hole?

The original was the best, but "Rocky 2" wasn't bad.

Telluride is a lovely little town with a free Gondola that takes you to amazing views of the sunset, and puts you in the spectacular San Juan range. But I've only been there in fall, I have no idea how crowded it was in summer. There are other towns in the San Juans which are supposed to be nice, Durango and Silverton and so on, but I haven't seen enough of them to say anything useful.

Aspen is a very attractive town, but not as attractive as Telluride, but with more obvious money around and slightly less spectacular scenery.

Estes Park is a lovely little town on the edge of Rocky Mountain National Park, with downtown that's touristy but which I liked anyway, but there was a hell of a traffic jam there every evening as the park emptied out along a two-lane road.

I didn't like Vail very much, it was more McMansiony and Republican, with a million shops selling expensive skiing outfits. Seriously, the town seemed to be about 30% retail stores.

Culture? I don't think Wyoming, Idaho or Montana can provide much of that.

Why 6 to 7 weeks? Seems like a lot of repetitive stuff just in different locales.

They’re just big rocks. I hate them.

Make sure you catch Lillian Gish in Camille at the Central City Opera House!

I would just take a train trip and be done with it.

Yes, OP, travel by train!

In Colorado, a trip to Ouray is a must. Surrounded by beautiful mountains, it's sometimes called "the Switzerland of America."

Harve seems to have been a fan...