Three Colorado Friends Complete 64 Counties in 62 Hours

Aspen —The fog clings to the peaks above Vail Village just before dawn. The air is thin, cold, and still. Inside the gondola cabin display, the light is artificial, bright, and perfect for a snapshot.

Outside, the world is waking up. Inside, Holly McCollough, Floyd Pierce, and Leilani Osmundson are already counting seconds.

They aren’t just visiting Colorado. They are conquering it. On July 24, the trio launched a 64-county, 64-hour road trip to mark the state’s 150th anniversary. They didn’t just drive through the counties. They timed them. They tracked them. They beat the clock.

The final time? 62 hours, 24 minutes, and 35 seconds.

They had an hour and a half to spare. That margin of error feels generous until you realize what they were up against. Traffic. Construction. Mudslides. Fires. Weather. The variables piled up like snow on I-70.

The idea started in February. Co-workers and friends McCollough and Pierce stumbled on the Colorado Passport Program. The challenge was simple: visit all 64 counties by year’s end. That was too easy for them. They wanted speed. They wanted pressure. They wanted to do it in 64 hours.

The plan sat in McCollough’s calendar as a question mark until Osmundson joined. Then, in June, the planning began. The spreadsheet was strict. It was unforgiving. Each stop allowed three to seven minutes. That’s all you get for a photo op, a welcome center check-in, or a quick museum tour. They built in a 2½-hour buffer between the three days of driving. It wasn’t much. It was necessary.

“Every second counted for the whole time,” McCollough said.

They rotated roles. One slept. One drove. One managed social media. That last part mattered. Their Instagram presence, over 400 followers, became a lifeline. It connected them to locals in every county they passed through. It turned a solitary drive into a community event.

In Eagle County, they had barely three minutes. They met Amanda Zinn, the town of Vail’s Welcome Center manager. She didn’t just watch them pass. She helped them.

“Sixty-four counties in 64 hours is a wonderful way to celebrate Colorado’s 150th,” Zinn said. “We were happy to be an early stop and to send them off with a good photo.”

McCollough called Zinn the first community member they met. Osmundson called it the “epitome of what the trip was.” It was about people sacrificing their time to support strangers. It was about pride in work and county.

They found the Vail Village gondola display the best photo op. But picking a favorite county felt unfair. You can’t rank a night drive against a sunrise. Still, Costilla and Otero counties ranked high. The insight into local lifestyles and history there was real. They even caught the town of San Luis celebrating its 175th birthday.

Motion sickness hit occasionally. A road closure into Silverton threatened to derail them. But they kept moving. They mapped it out. They executed it.

Pierce admitted he thought it was a 50-50 chance before they started. He was right. The odds were never in their favor, but they didn’t need luck. They needed precision.

The trip ended not with a bang, but with a spreadsheet closing. The data was logged. The counties were checked. The state was celebrated.

It’s hard to say what’s next. The passport program is still open for others. But for these three, the clock has stopped. The 64 hours are done. The question now is whether the rest of the state can keep up.