Colorado National Monument – See them while you can! and Nine Months on the Road

Our original plan was to do the north rim of the Black Canyon on Monday, 4/24. Since there is no direct access from one side to the other, it’s a 2-3 hour drive around and only gravel roads on the north side. We decided to rethink that plan when we realized that the canyon is so narrow we could literally see the cars and people on the opposite rim. Could the views really be that much different? Doubt it. So instead, we opted to go visit the Colorado National Monument. Good choice.

Ute Canyon.

Fallen Rock. (Yes, Captain Obvious. Lol.)

The Colorado National Monument is close to Grand Junction, so it was about the same drive time, but we got to see some totally different country.  The Colorado Monument was established in 1911 to protect 32 square miles of rugged plateau and canyon country. While this particular park is not on Trump’s hit list, don’t even get me started. I am equal parts appalled and furious that he would even consider reversing the national monument status of 24 parks. His short-sighted arrogance is a menace to the legacy we should be protecting. I want my kid’s kids to have the same opportunity we’ve had. What could possibly motivate the man to make such an unprecedented attack on the park system? Oh wait, let me guess. Money. Public land for sale to the highest bidder to be exploited and irreparably damaged so some rich SOB can get richer. This is supposed to be a travelogue not a political rant, but at this rate there won’t be anything left to see. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Rog took a picture of this statue of the Montrose Mouse, “The Last Act of Defiance,”  and I thought it was singularly appropriate. Although I do think it's customary for the middle digit to be extended, rather than curled into a fist. Lol.

The Last Act of Defiance.

Deep breath. Back to the awesome scenery of the Colorado National Monument. The 23-mile Rim Rock Drive offers many fantastic overlooks. The weather was chilly and very, very windy so we only did some of the short hikes around the overlooks. We found a fun little tunnel to explore and Rian did some more rock hunting.

Living on the edge.

It must run in the family. Lol. 

Cool! A tunnel to explore.

Looking up and looking out. :)

Check out the view from inside.

Spring wildflowers and yucca.

Twisted Juniper limbs offer an inviting seat.

There are some awesome sculpted rock formations – Coke Ovens, Window Rock and the Kissing Couple were favorites. John Otto, who was instrumental in getting these lands protected as a national monument, started a tradition in 1911 which continues to this day. Each year on the 4^th of July, climbers ascend the 450-foot Independence Monument and plant the American flag on top. 

Coke Ovens.

Window Rock.

Kissing Couple.

Looking for the perfect camera angle. Lol.
No flag on Independence Monument today, we're a few months early.

Independence Monument.

Balanced Rock.

Tuesday, it rained off and on all day. We were happy to spend the day just hanging out in the coach. Rog ran some errands, while Rian and I sorted through boxes (and boxes, and more boxes) of rocks and petrified wood. She picked out some smaller pieces to take back and laid claim to some larger ones that we’ll deliver when we get to Sacramento sometime in June. Rog also smoked a pork shoulder on the Traeger, low and slow (7 hours!), but worth the wait. Delicious. 

The week has flown by. Wednesday we move to Fruita, CO, which is just 10 miles west of Grand Junction. Rian’s flight leaves from there a little after 3pm.  It’s been fun (mostly) having the youngest daughter along for this part of the ride. Getting schooled in Scrabble – maybe not so much. Lol. We have a new reigning Scrabble Queen. She started the game off with a 7-letter bonus word and it went downhill from there. I demand a rematch! 😊 Randi just started a new job at Sawyer Lake Veterinary Hospital, but I’m hoping she can take a few days off and come visit while we’re in Sacramento. It’s been too long since the girls have had a chance to gang up on Mom and Dad together. Lol.

Nine Months on the Road! This month has been incredibly busy, hitting several parks, doing long hikes and having Rian visit. It's been a lot of fun, but it also tested our (ok, my) courage and limits – thinking now of those ladders and 30 miles of strenuous hiking in 3 days. Throw in some snow and several very energetic weather systems (read that crazy wind storms!) and it’s sometimes been a little more adventure than necessary. Lol. That said, I’m finding that the sense of accomplishment lingers far longer than the fear or sore feet. One of my few regrets on this trip was wimping out and not tackling the Beehive hike in Acadia National Park in Maine. I know there are more challenges ahead, Angels Landing Trail in Zion comes to mind, but I’m committed to at least trying. (Besides, it won’t have any ladders! Lol.)

It was wonderful to visit with Rian, but I also miss Randi and other family and friends. We are still thoroughly enjoying our travels and it has helped to share them with you through the blog and pictures. We still have three months to go but, if the first nine months are any indication, that time will go by very quickly. We did some jello planning today, mapping out a tentative route that will get us into California to visit family in June. Then we’ll be covering familiar territory as we wind our way home. Still not sure how I feel about that. Lol.

So here are the stats for our nine months on the road. We put in 1002 miles this month, for a total of 11,968 miles in the RV. We've pumped 1411 gallons of diesel and stayed at 77 different places. We have been busy hitting the parks this month and it would be hard to pick a favorite! We added three national parks (Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison) and two national monuments (Natural Bridges and Colorado National Monument).  So, our totals stand at: 25 National Parks/Monuments, many state/local parks plus Disney and Universal Studios. We have been jumping back and forth between Colorado and Utah, bringing the number of states we’ve visited up to 33. 

Happy Threesome and the Black Canyon - Steep, Deep and Narrow

We arrived in Montrose on Wednesday, 4/19, and had a few days to catch up on laundry, maintenance, and shopping before Rian arrived on the 21^st. Montrose exemplifies Colorado’s outdoor enthusiast vibe with a large array of city parks connected by paved walking/biking paths. Several of the linear parks had par courses with the most sophisticated and well maintained exercise equipment I’ve ever seen in a public park. The snow topped mountain ranges surrounding the town were breathtaking. This area has a lot to recommend it.

Rog was also able to get in a mountain bike ride on the nearby Buzzard Gulch trail. He liked the trail, but said the scenery wasn’t as spectacular as his last ride in red-rock country.

Pretty, but not as striking as red-rock country.

The Cedar Creek RV park we stayed at was in the city limits, so we were close to shopping and restaurants. On the downside, the spaces were way too close together for comfort and those gorgeous mountain views were obscured by the surrounding buildings. The RV park did have the most elaborate mini-golf of any campground we’ve ever visited. If you get a kick out of mini-golf, you’d have loved it – 18-holes, moving obstacles, well designed course, and lots of fun. We played the course with Rian and I’m glad there were no officials to observe some of our, ahem, more questionable tactics. Lol.

We picked Rian up at the Grand Junction airport around 9:30pm Friday evening. She came bearing gifts, taking care of Rog’s birthday, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day in one fell swoop. Mine was extra special – love it! Saturday, we started the day off right with a trip to the local farmer’s market. It was small, but had two vendors with really yummy baked goods. We loaded up on bread, pastries, coffee cake, and assorted other treats. One of these days I’ll actually just buy produce at the farmer’s market. (But not today! Lol.)

Rian made this plaque. Love it. Love her. Love the Callie girl.

Soooooo good! :) 

After a caffeine and carbohydrate breakfast, we made the 15-mile drive to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. This was another of those parks I’d never heard of before planning this trip. While everyone’s heard of the Grand Canyon, the Black Canyon is unique in how incredibly deep, steep and narrow it is. Carved by the rushing Gunnison River, it got its name because so little sunlight reached the bottom of the narrow canyon that some areas are nearly always dark. Parts of the river are so fast and rocky, dropping 480 feet in one two-mile stretch, that it is considered unnavigable.  The parts you can float are still recommended for expert/experienced kayakers – guess our little inflatable kayak won’t be getting wet here! Lol.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Father-Daughter Selfie. 

The visitor’s center has a cool sculpture showing the profile of the canyon. At the Narrows, the small visitor’s center building would completely span the bottom of the 2300-foot deep canyon!

Yep, it gets narrow at the bottom.
Not that far across at the rim either, in many places it's deeper than it is wide.

Happy Threesome.

Getting to the bottom of the canyon is a back-country wilderness hike so we stuck with the 7-mile scenic drive which has 12 overlooks with shorter hikes along the rim. On Saturday, we did just a part of the south-rim drive and the 2-mile Oak Flat Loop trail. At this elevation, there was still snow and ice on the shady parts of the trail. A bit nippy too. 😊

Oak Flat Loop Trail.

Snow and sheer walls along the trail.

Enjoying the view.

Cross Fissures Overlook.

Bonding over a really big hole in the ground. :) 

Sunday morning we indulged in French Toast made from the delicious homemade farmer’s market bread before returning to the Black Canyon. We finished up the south-rim drive and did the hike out to Warner Point where the gorge is 2,772 feet deep and you also have great views of the snowy West Elk mountain range.

The Painted Wall.
This is one of the highlights and rightly so, fabulous striations in the rock face. 

Contemplating geology.

The gorge is deepest at Warner Point, 2,772 feet doooooown.

The snowy West Elk Mountains make a nice backdrop for the canyon.

Rian is not at all fond of heights (she comes by that honestly), but she enjoyed the views and had a great time rock hunting along the trails (and that too! Lol.). We both loved the twisted Juniper trees and she took time for a few tree-yoga poses. Lol. We were hoping to sight a Big Horn Sheep, but had to content ourselves with birds, squirrels, and a curious mule deer.  

Tree yoga. :)

The twisted Juniper trees were awesome.

What's not to love about these views!

A collection of critters.
Notice the woodpecker moved so fast he left a ghost image.

I had intended to cram our week of familial adventures into one post, but ended up with way too many pics. So stay tuned for an unplanned trip to the Colorado National Monument and our nine-month anniversary update.

Canyonlands – Island in the Sky

We pulled into Horsethief Campground early Sunday afternoon (4/16) and quickly found a nice spot to call home for the next three days. For a BLM campground, Horsethief is large (over 50 sites) and they are exceptionally roomy, with lots of space between sites. Although there aren’t any amenities besides pit toilets and garbage service, we loved the campground. Lovely views and better yet, hiking and mountain biking trails galore, with many leaving right from the campground. Rog is itching to try out the bike trails. 😊

Love it here and Rog's mountain bike trail runs right by our site.

In addition to the mountain biking, we’re here to see the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands National Park. So after setting up camp, we drove over to the park to check it out. The scenery here is a bit different from the Needles section, which you can see off in the distance. This part of the park has stunning chasms carved by the Colorado and Green Rivers. Most of the developed area of the park is on the mesa top. There is a 34-mile scenic drive with lots of spectacular overlooks.

Wow. The view from the visitor's center.

Below the mesa top is the “white rim.” A layer of harder, white sandstone outlines the deeper chasms descending to the rivers. If you have a 4-wheel drive vehicle you can drive the 100-mile White Rim Road that loops around and below the mesa top. Hikers have a choice of staying on the mesa top or hiking down to the white rim.  The problem with the hikes down to the white rim is that that eventually you have to hike back up to the mesa top. Lol. All the hikes are classified as strenuous with elevation changes of 1400-1600 feet. The tootsies rebelled and we opted for some of the shorter, easier mesa top hikes. Besides, we felt like we got far more bang for our buck on the shorter trails around the overlooks.

Most of the park is on the upper "mesa top" area.

Over a 1000 feet below the mesa top is the "white rim."
The Colorado and Green Rivers are still far below that at the bottom of the canyons.

Sunday afternoon, we did part of the scenic drive and hit the visitor center, Buck Canyon Overlook, Grand View, and Mesa Arch. Grand View is at the tip of the mesa so you can look into the valleys on either side. 

Grand View Overlook is aptly named. :) 

It does really look like an Island in the Sky. 

Looking west toward the Green River and the Maze.

Looking east toward Monument Basin and the Needles.
You can see the White Rim Road around the edge.

Monument Basin.

La Sal Mountains.

Talk about bang for your buck. Mesa Arch is a short 1/4 mile jaunt from the parking area. Lovely arch and spectacular views. This is a popular spot for sunrise pics, but I never managed to drag my dead butt out of bed early enough for that. Maybe next time. :) 

Mesa Arch.

View through the arch. 

Washer Woman Arch. Can you see her??

Happy campers under the arch.

Monday was Rog’s day to hit the mountain bike trails. I opted to hang out at camp, work on the blog, catch up on campground reviews, and do a short hiking trail close to our campsite. Rog left about 10am taking the Chisholm Trail from the campground to the Navajo Rocks loop and then back to camp, putting in about 29 miles (with the last several uphill and into a head wind, ain't it always that way? Lol). This time he took a camera and got some awesome shots! One of the great things about biking is that he can go farther and cover way more territory than is feasible in a day hike. 

The trail wound around Big Mesa, over slickrock, down winding single track, and along some steep drop offs. The day started off cloudy, but the sun came out and he had blue skies and perfect weather. He made it back to camp around 4pm, exhausted and smiling. 😊

Big Mesa.

The trail is marked with color-coded paint on the slickrock.

Single track - Rog's favorite.

The Monitor and Merrimac formations. 

That's a long drop off the edge to the right. Gulp. 

Tired, happy puppy.

Awesome pano of the trail.

Our last day at Horsethief, we went back to Island in the Sky to finish the scenic drive and do a few more of the shorter hikes. We were interested in Upheaval Dome, a 2-mile wide crater whose origins are somewhat controversial. Scientists are leaning toward the theory that it was caused by a violent meteorite impact. Whatever its origins, it’s awesomely cool.  

Upheaval Dome.

Regardless of its origins - very cool! :)

This sign was posted in the pit toilets at the trailhead.
I don't even want to know why it was necessary. Ick!

We also hiked onto Whale Rock and enjoyed the views from the Green River Overlook. Whale Rock was a fun climb up a huge slickrock formation, our only problem was the winds were howling so fiercely I could barely hold the camera steady to get a picture! Lol.

Rog climbing up the back of the Whale. :)

Look! There's a whole pod behind us. 

A whale of a view. Ok, bad pun. Sorry. Lol.

Mini Half-Dome at Green River Overlook. 

Green river winding below the white rim. 

Our next stop won’t be nearly as scenic, but I need an address for a med delivery so we’ll be staying for a week in Montrose, CO at a private RV park. The good news is that we’re only about 15 miles away from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The really good news is that we’ll pick Rian up at the Grand Junction airport on Friday evening!  She’ll hang out with us until Wednesday, 4/26 and we’ll get to explore the national park together. Looking forward to that!!