Alea LaRocque never had a treehouse when she was growing up, but she always wanted one. So, on her 30th birthday, her now-wife Ashley booked a stay at a treehouse hotel in Washington State. They were looking for a proper hotel with staff and services, not an Airbnb, and the Washington property was the only one Ashley could find. The treehouse itself was charming, but the guest experience fell flat. Later, the Denver-based couple visited a treehouse resort in Mexico, where they found the opposite: great hospitality but a barebones structure. What if, they wondered, a place offered both?
Six years later, the Juniper Lodge and Treehouses was born. But the path to get there wasn't an easy one.
“We have very high standards,” Alea, who spent years working in restaurants, told Field Mag. “We thought, why isn’t anyone doing this in Colorado?”