While taking a Sunday afternoon day trip, my wife and our two small children (ages 6 & 7) chose a winding, narrow dirt road called Phantom Canyon Road.

We had left Victor, Co at about 5:10pm and started heading down the road, thinking what a nice drive. It turned out to be spectacular, in the dusk that was coming, and nothing short of breath-taking. We simply were driveing the mountains to see the fall colors of the Rockies, and while there was some of this, the canyons, granite walls and narrow passages took this to the next level.

We were in our main family vehicle, a Dodge Caravan 2WD on this road, and since it was dry, we had no issues save one scraping moment going through a semi-washed out spot. There was a small wash-out spot in the road about 1.5 feet across and about 8-10 inches deep that we bottomed out on - not a big deal really for us, but in a smaller lower car it could have been damaging.

The road is not too much fun once the sun goes behind the surrounding mountains and it gets dark. I say not too much fun because you can no longer take in the scenery, the drive itself was not bad for me, but having grew up in Colorado and taken many mountain trips day and night, I was comfortable with it.

A great day trip road with great scenery makes this a drive to see. If the conditions were different, such as rain (even recent rain in the past few days) a mini-van would not have traversed this road, so keep that in mind and verify the recent weather if you are not in a 4WD vehicle.