Spacious 2400 sq ft NoBo Home: Restaurants - Hiking - Trails - Quiet

2400 sq ft for you to spread out. Vaulted ceilings, oak floors, and a gas fireplace in a quiet North Boulder home where the streets end and the foothills begin. Two trailheads within a mile: Wonderland Lake's easy loop one way, the Hogback Ridge climb the other. Five minutes on foot are Moxie's sourdough, Proto's Neapolitan pizza and the original Upslope taproom; Pearl Street is four miles straight down Broadway. Upstairs, the landing is a book-lined loft — the quietest seat in the house.

Sits in Dakota Ridge, the newest neighborhood at the north edge of Boulder - Lee Hill Road below it, open space above and behind it. It's a genuinely quiet base with the city four miles down one straight road. Broadway takes you to Pearl Street in about ten minutes, or the SKIP bus runs the same corridor every ten minutes on weekdays if you'd rather not park downtown.

Light-filled and vaulted on both levels, with red-oak floors throughout and windows that look into mature trees on every side. It reads as a home someone actually lives in - cookbooks in the dining room, a wall of books upstairs - not a staged rental.

Living room: gas fireplace under a wood mantel, tall windows, and room for everyone to sit down together.

Kitchen: a proper cook's kitchen, bright and white, opening straight into the dining room so nobody's stuck working alone.

Dining: seats six under a stained-glass pendant, with a sliding door out to a patio.

The loft: the upstairs landing is lined floor-to-ceiling with built-in bookshelves and has a reading chair tucked in beside a window. Quietest seat in the house, and the natural place to open a laptop.

Covered front porch: two chairs and morning shade, facing a tree-lined street.

Two City of Boulder trailheads are within a mile of the front door, and they're completely different days out:

Foothills Trailhead (5273 N. Broadway, about 0.6 mi) - Hogback Ridge climbs 1.8 miles and 746 feet through ponderosa savannah for the best city-and-plains view at this end of the range. Foothills North is the gentle one: 1.3 miles, 296 feet, rolling grassland and wetland edge.

Wonderland Lake Trailhead (4201 N. Broadway, about 0.8 mi) - an easy 1.1-mile loop around the lake, plus the Old Kiln Trail (0.8 mi) past a surviving 1800s limestone kiln, with fault lines and fossil beds along the way.

Both are free to park, open 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., and have no restrooms - go before you go. Bringing a dog? Hand-held leash is required on everything at Wonderland Lake, no exceptions. Foothills North allows off-leash with a City of Boulder Voice & Sight tag. Dogs are not permitted on Hogback Ridge at all - that one's a permanent rule, not seasonal.

Eat and drink like a local, five minutes down the hill. The North Broadway corridor below the neighborhood is the real North Boulder, not a tourist strip:

Moxie Bread Co. (4593 Broadway) - heirloom-grain bakery milling its own flour on site; Red Fife and emmer sourdough.

Spruce Confections (4684 Broadway) - neighborhood bakery-café since 1992. Croissants, scones, soups.

Proto's Pizzeria Napoletana (4670 Broadway) - wood-fired Neapolitan.

Upslope Brewing (1501 Lee Hill Rd) - the original Upslope taproom, open since 2008, with a dog-friendly patio.

BookCliff Vineyards (1501 Lee Hill Rd) - Boulder's only working winery; tasting room Thursday–Sunday.

Bacco Trattoria & Mozzarella Bar (1200 Yarmouth) - Italian, with one of the few dedicated mozzarella bars in the country.

Wapo's Cantina (4929 Broadway), Tierra y Fuego (4550 Broadway, handmade masa tortillas), and Little Tibet (4479 Broadway, momos and thukpa) round out the block.

Amante Coffee (4580 Broadway) - where Boulder's cyclists regroup.

The neighborhood's own back yard. Foothills Community Park (800 Cherry Ave) is the closest green space at roughly half a mile: 65 acres with a playground, splash pad, pickleball, and a fenced off-leash dog park with separate large- and small-dog areas. It's also the official landing zone for the paragliders you'll see coming off Wonderland Hill - worth watching with coffee. Primos Park adds a bike pump track and creek access about a mile southeast, and Boulder Valley Ranch's open ranchland trails are a short drive northeast.

For cyclists, this address is the point. Lee Hill Road starts at the bottom of the neighborhood and climbs 4.3 miles at an average 5.9% grade for 1,404 feet - one of the classic Front Range road climbs, usually ridden as a loop with Left Hand Canyon. Boulder itself has 300-plus miles of bikeway and Platinum-level bike-friendly status.