Indoor Things to Do in Boulder

A quick word on why this list exists in a city famous for sunshine. Boulder does get rain, but the days that actually force people indoors here are more often smoke from a fire somewhere upwind, or spring mud, when Open Space and Mountain Parks closes trails outright rather than let them get widened and wrecked. The answer is the same either way.

Go to the Dairy Arts Center at 26th and Walnut. The galleries are free and open daily from noon to 6 p.m., and the same building has a cinema and a theatre, so a wet afternoon can be a free hour of art followed by a ticketed film without going back outside. Nothing else in Boulder stacks that neatly under one roof.

If you want free and you have a car, NCAR's Mesa Lab is the best value in the city: free admission, free parking, free guided tours at noon on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, open 363 days a year. The catch is access, not money. There is no public transit up the mesa and the nearest bus stop is a 2.1 mile walk with 610 feet of climbing, so it is a car trip.

Downtown and on foot, Boulder Bookstore is the only indoor stop actually on the pedestrian mall, with three floors and more than 100,000 titles. A block west, Trident has been selling coffee and used books since 1980. And the Dushanbe Teahouse takes no reservations for lunch or brunch, only walk-ins, which makes it the rare good Boulder restaurant you can decide on while already wet.

• CU Art Museum, 1085 18th Street. No admission fee, no ticket. Typically closed on Saturdays with a daytime home football game.
• Dairy Arts Center galleries, 2590 Walnut. Free daily, noon to 6 p.m.
• NCAR Mesa Lab, 1850 Table Mesa Drive. Free, including tours and parking.
• BMoCA, 1750 13th Street. Pay what you want, $1 minimum on cards only.
• Boulder Public Library, 1001 Arapahoe Avenue, and its free BLDG 61 makerspace.
• Boulder Bookstore and Trident, both free to browse.

Everything else free in Boulder is in the free things to do guide.

The city's three recreation centers all have indoor pools: North Boulder on Broadway, South Boulder on Gillaspie, and East Boulder on Sioux Drive. A day pass runs $15 for adults, $11 for 60 and over, $9 for youth 2 to 17, or $32 for a group of four, and it works at all three on the day you buy it. East Boulder has a climbing wall as well, and South Boulder has a Ninja Studio. The city closes pools for maintenance, usually in August, and posts the dates on each facility page, so check before driving out.

For climbing, Movement on Valmont publishes a $29 day pass with shoes at $6. Boulder Rock Club on Mapleton has ropes and bouldering plus youth programs. The Spot on Prairie Avenue opened in 2002 as the first bouldering gym in the United States and is bouldering only, no ropes. ABC Kids Climbing on 32nd is youth-specific and coach-led rather than drop-in.

And the library's BLDG 61 is a free drop-in workshop with no registration and all ages welcome, with a second space called STUDIO 24 at the NoBo branch. Under 18s need a guardian's signed release each visit, and under 14s need an adult with them.

There is no public ice rink in Boulder. The only rink belongs to CU's Student Recreation Center, and CU states plainly that a Rec Center membership is required, with skating limited to students, members and their guests. It is a staple of Boulder rainy-day lists and it will cost you an afternoon. There is no roller rink either.

The CU Museum of Natural History is closed. Its own homepage carries a banner saying it reopens in fall 2026. It is exactly the kind of place a rainy-day list should send you, which is why it is worth saying plainly that right now it cannot.

With children, the family guide covers the same places with ages and prices. The museums get fuller treatment in the Pearl Street and museums guide, somewhere warm to eat is in the food guide, and the outdoors guide explains when trails close. The full Boulder guide covers every other category.