We drove about 14 miles up the Loop, and took quite a few pictures. I am putting three of them together below with one simple comment; views of this type were commonplace. As you can see, the Aspen trees are really starting to turn at these higher altitudes. The fourth picture will be a little scriptural, King Ken’s Version.
The Bible says and you kids sang, “The wise man built his house upon a rock, the foolish man etc.”. Well the version up here in Colorado says, “the foolish man built his house upon a hillside that was aligned with potential snowslides. This was a small store operation until one winter the snowslide appeared, from across the road behind me. I think the owner, who escaped, decided to change vocations after this happened.
I think that there is quite a story with respect to the picture above. Way back when someone decided to build a dam to do something with the river water which flowed through the canyon At the present time the river has breached the dam at its bottom portion. The thickness of the dam at the bottom was the same as at the top, and this doesn’t work with dams, period. There are a number of structures that are unoccupied; so it is a very strange area.
After we exited the Loop, we headed north on the Silver Thread Byway. I should take a minute and say that this 117 mile Byway was one of the most beautiful roads we have ever driven. You don’t do this road in two hours.
After we exited the Loop, we headed north on the Silver Thread Byway. I should take a minute and say that this 117 mile Byway was one of the most beautiful roads we have ever driven. You don’t do this road in two hours.
The Byway ends at US-50, which heads west, along the northern side of the Blue Mesa Reservoir. Okay, geography lesson. The Gunnison River runs east and west across central Colorado, starting out in Gunnison and ending up in the Colorado River, near Grand Junction. Along the way it carved, over eons, the Black Canyon, which we will visit tomorrow. For whatever reasons, three dams were constructed on the river, all of them between Montrose and the city of Gunnison. The most easterly dam created the Blue Mesa Reservoir, a body of water maybe 20 or so miles long that filled parts of the canyon. This reservoir is a paradise for boaters and fishermen, and I suspect is packed all summer long. The picture above is a formation known as the Dillon Pinnacles, sitting across the reservoir. We had just crossed to the southern side via a bridge.
The second dam in this system is the Morrow Point Dam. We were able to drive down fairly close to this guy but forbidden, of course, to go any further. (in case I had a nuke in my camera bag). This picture of the dam, which is 468 feet high, shows some of the terrain, the spillways, etc. The Morrow Point Reservoir runs a good bit east from the dam which created it.
We intend to check out the other two dams in the next couple of days.
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