Not everything is bigger and better in Colorado.

While Colorado's national parks and national forests offer outstanding opportunities for wilderness adventure, if you're thinking of going to a state park, don't waste your time in Colorado. Stay in Georgia.

There's no polite way to say this: Colorado's state parks are lame. When you go to a typical Georgia state park, you're going to have nice campsites surrounded by trees, and hiking trails through the forest. Many Georgia parks have cottages you can rent, and nearly all have interpretive programs.

By contrast, more than two-thirds of Colorado's state parks are nothing but a reservoir. Basically, they were created after somebody dammed a creek to provide water to a town. Since they couldn't develop the land around the reservoir, officials said, "What should we do with this property? Hey, here's an idea: Let's give it to the state and let them make a park out of it!"

But by my definition, it's really a stretch to call some of these places "parks." To me, a park is a place where you go to have fun. If you don't have a boat, there's not much to do at most Colorado state parks. All you've got is a small manmade lake, usually with no trees around it. These places aren't scenic like Lake Lanier. You can camp or picnic beside these mini-lakes, but why would you want to? You're out in the open with the sun beating down on you, and it's not pleasant at all.

A handful of Colorado state parks were not created around reservoirs, but I have problems with some of those, too. For example, Castlewood Canyon State Park is an interesting little canyon (though not nearly as deep or as beautiful as Georgia's Tallulah Gorge) just east of Castle Rock, a booming suburb of Denver. But the visitor's experience is marred by the fact that when you stand on the rim (where there's hardly any trees, of course), you can see you're surrounded by subdivisions, right up to the park boundary.

This is called encroachment, and it's not so much of an issue here in Georgia. If you go to Vogel or Unicoi state parks, for example, the boundary is contiguous with the Chattahoochee National Forest, so you get a sense of being in a vast woodland.

The few Colorado state parks that are truly worth visiting are the ones that are surrounded by national forests. My favorite, so far, is Mueller State Park, located west of Colorado Springs. It's got 50 miles of hiking trails and great views of Pikes Peak. Unfortunately, it is a rare exception.

Another Colorado state park, Rifle Falls, is distinctive in its own way. But it's not nearly as special as I initially thought. I first visited Rifle Falls in 2006, and I returned this summer with my sister and her three children, ages 2, 5, and 9.

The park is small, only 100 acres, but it makes for a good half-day family outing. The obvious attraction is the falls. There's not one but three waterfalls, parallel to each other and shooting out over the top of a cliff at tremendous volume. It's a pretty impressive sight. There's a short trail that goes up and over the falls, and during this excursion you begin to realize the sad truth: This amazing triple waterfall is not natural. The water is piped!

The park's brochure tells the full story. Originally there was a single waterfall, but in 1910 the town of Rifle split the stream into three sections so it could power the turbines of the state's first hydroelectric plant. The plant is long gone, but they never returned the waterfall to its natural condition. 

It's easy to understand why they didn't. Visitors are enchanted with the triple waterfall. You can't get anywhere near the falls without being drenched in spray. Kids love to play in the mist.

But to me, the most interesting aspect of the park is the caves that penetrate the cliffs behind the falls. Caves are common in this part of northwestern Colorado, which includes the spectacular Glenwood Canyon. Last year, my sister and I took the kids to Glenwood Caverns, in the town of Glenwood Springs.

It's a commercial cavern, like Mammoth Caves in Kentucky. You can go deep inside and view awesome, artificially lit "rooms" filled with weird stalactite/stalagmite formations. But you must be accompanied by a tour guide.

For little kids, it's not much fun. They have to stay with the group and keep quiet and stand around listening to the tour guide talking. To protect the integrity of the cavern, they're not allowed to run around and explore.

The caves at Rifle Falls, on the other hand, are shallow enough to be lit by daylight, and they're open to anyone. Kids -- little boys in particular -- are thrilled to be able to climb all over the rocks and to peer into dark holes, imagining they see bats or spiders.

I think the caves alone are worth a trip to Rifle Falls. And I admit the triumvirate of waterfalls is pretty cool to look at. But knowing that nature had been manipulated for aesthetic purposes made me uneasy. If I wanted to see "false falls," I would have gone to Disney World.