Places you can stop:
Idaho Springs
Empire
Georgetown
Silverthorne-Frisco
Copper Mountain
Vail
Avon-Edwards
Eagle-Gypsum
Glenwood Springs
Newcastle
Silt-Rifle
The route is heavy with mountain resort communities out to Rifle. The will be restaurants in most of these communities, with the usual collection of travel services clustered right at the exit.
The paired-communities are places where you can get off to travel the old highway (US-40 toward the eastern end, US-6 to the west) for access to more facilities than you will typically find at an exit.
Silt, where the highway very close to the Colorado River, is a summer resort where you will find RV parks and restaurants, if that's what you mean by "places to stop." But that's almost all the way to Grand Junction.
Glenwood Springs, where the Roaring Fork joins the Colorado, is another major resort, closer to half way. But Denver to Grand Junction is only about four hours at Interstate Highway speeds, so halfway is not very far.
The road is a busy Interstate Highway with a lot of truck traffic. Where grades are enough to greatly slow truck traffic, there are extra lanes. Road condition is what it is on our overage Interstate system, winters are long and harsh on this section so summers are spend rebuilding sections of the road. Colorado DOT (you have a link) will have up to date construction information. I see the Eisenhower Tunnel is down to one lane, that will likely slow traffic some.
Coming from Denver, there is not really an alternative route. Coming from Colorado Springs/Pueblo area, US-50 is a good alternative, but is more than a four hour drive, maybe 5-6 hours steady driving. But I don't really know, because I've never made in from Pueblo to Grand Junction in less than two days, sometimes it stretches out to four or five days, because there is so much to see and do along this route.
Tom Test
Itasca Spirit 29B
