THURSDAY, 09/16/2010 - BLACK CANYON OF THE GUNNISON

We spent a good part of the day today visiting the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Once in the Park we traveled the Southern Rim Road to its end and back and then traveled the East Portal Road to its end and back. And, we took a few pictures along the way.

First of all a geography lesson. The Black Canyon is a total of 53 miles long; 14 of these are in the Park. At its greatest, the walls are 2700 feet above the river. At the nearest point, the rims are only 1100 feet apart; it is a very unique and different canyon.

We stopped at the Tomichi View Point location shortly after entering the park, and this was our first view of the canyon, some 1100 feet below.

Our next stop was at the Visitor’s Center where an elaborate trail had been set up to view the canyon, 1200 feet below. Right now I will apologize for the brightness of these pictures; it was an incredibly sunny day today and there was lots of glare. Anyhow, you can see a portion of the river as it wends its way through the canyon it created. There is a large, very thin formation down there which the rangers say is about 300 feet high.

While I was doing the “elaborate trail” mentioned above, my soul mate was keeping a very careful watch on me. We haven’t decided yet if she would have come down the trail to rescue me if my breath completely went south.

This picture was taken from a location known as the “Painted Rocks”. Well okay, the rocks did have different colors, but this was not the key here. The top of the rocks on the right, with the green stuff, is the highest point over the river, at 2700 feet. The literature states that two Empire State Buildings could stand end to end here, from the river to the top. And again, there’s the river down there.

After reaching the end of the road you return. At the entrance to the park there is a second roadway, the East Portal Road, which follows the canyon down to the site of the first dam mentioned in a previous post. The road to this structure entailed dropping in altitude on a 16 % grade for close to three miles. This was quite a trip. Along the way the fields were ablaze with color and yes, that’s the gorge just beyond the fields.

Here’s a little trivia for any of you who care. Back around 1909, a six mile long tunnel was constructed from the Gunnison River to the farm country just south of here. At some later date, the diversion dam, shown here, was constructed to divert water into the tunnel or allow same to head downstream. Please don’t ask me how it works; I,m just the local photographer.

I promised you the third, or first, I don’t know which, dam in this system, and here it is. The Crystal Dam is 323 feet high, and like its comrades is unvisitable. There is a relatively long reservoir built up in front of this dam but access to it is a little difficult.

Visited Montrose in the afternoon and both of us were quite pleased with what we saw; it seems like a very nice medium size town and sure is in the center of a great area of our country. Tomorrow we will do the Northern Rim Road, which at one point was only 1100 feet from us. Tomorrow it is 85 miles.

After breakfast we headed out on our journey of about 111 miles, which took us almost seven hours. We stopped off at the 390 foot, Blue Mesa Dam, the third and most easterly of the dams, but you’ll have to take my word that it is there as there was no good place to grab a picture. I was however able to walk across the dam and get this lovely picture of the Blue Mesa Reservoir.


Following this stop we took off on the West Elk Scenic Byway Loop, Highway 92, which turned out to be a treasure. We followed this twisty, up and down, incredibly colorful highway almost to Crawford, where we turned off and headed over to the North Rim of the Black Canyon. We followed the North Rim Road for several miles, made a half dozen stops to walk out to the rim, and will present some of the pictures we took without comment. Please keep in mind that the same conditions that existed yesterday existed today. The sun was intense and reflected off of the higher rocks, giving a somewhat untrue picture of the rocks. Also keep in mind that the Gunnison River you see is a minimum of 1200 feet below the camera. We’ll follow these with a few with commentary.

The picture below was taken at the normal lens setting, no zoom, and was taken from the Chasm View lookout on the North Rim. The arrow points to the Chasm View lookout on the South Rim. The second picture shows, albeit fuzzy, a few folks checking out the canyon from the other side. Cool, eh?

And now, by popular demand, we present the two windblown authors of this little blog.

And last, but certainly not least, we present this photo expressly for the five Cinder offspring. All five of you will have no trouble with this picture I’m quite sure.

And tomorrow we are off to follow choo-choo trains.

SATURDAY, 09/18/2010 - CHOO-CHOO- TRAINS

Before we get into the meat of this post, we did a little sightseeing around Crawford.

This formation, that can be seen for miles, is the Needle. I think that it is about 700 feet tall. The literature shows all sorts of ways and times of year to take this picture, but it didn’t come out all that great in the morning sunshine.

This particular post was going to concentrate on two major areas: the Glenwood Canyon and Amtrak’s California Zephyr. First of all the canyon. Years ago, the railroad squeezed their track alongside the Colorado River, as it snaked its way through a very narrow, exquisitely beautiful canyon, about ten miles long. This area was just east of Glenwood Springs. Not all that long ago, the powers that be were trying to figure out how to finish Interstate 70, and started looking at the canyon. Multitudes of tree huggers, etc. protested long and loud, as they feared a four lane highway would ruin the canyon. The road won and was finally finished and it is something to talk about. Google it and look at some of the pictures: you’ll be astonished. Please don’t expect any pictures from me as I don’t take good pix driving at 50 mph (the speed limit) while the crazies are doing 75.

Now for the California Zephyr. A historic train, which for years has traveled from Chicago to San Francisco. It just so happens that the trains arrive in Glenwood Springs within an hour of each other, when they are on time.This apparently happens on rare occasions. Amtrak, which operates like the Post Office and other such ‘successful government enterprises’ has seen fit to run its trains on other folks tracks. If these other folks have to choose between using their tracks for a freight train or allowing Amtrak to have priority, guess what? OK, I’ll stop being political, but case in point. We scheduled today’s trip so that we could get pictures of both trains as they ran along the Colorado River, in the Glenwood Canyon. At the train station we were informed that the Eastbound was looking OK but the Westbound was running four hours late. So, we settled for half a loaf, for now.

Here comes the Eastbound. We got most of what we wanted in this first picture. The start of the Canyon, the river and a rafter, the bike path that runs the length of the canyon, and oh yes, the front of the train.

I took the liberty of zooming in a bit to show a little more detail of the train only to discover that the raft looks more like a two person kayak, I think.

I like this picture, except for the coloring. It shows our Eastbound going around a curve, never to be seen again today. It also has the river and the bike path, a view of what the mountains will look like throughout the canyon, and Interstate 70. The road through the entire canyon looks like this: the north side is literally built on stilts to avoid enlarging the canyon.

Shortly after we left the canyon, the river and the railroad headed north, away from the Interstate, so we did the same. We found ourselves in some beautiful, very deserted areas, as the river had cut its way through the mountains. The color was simply stunning and in all different shades. Ethel insisted that this sample be inserted and I must concur.

We arrived at our destination, the Rancho Del Rio, in mid afternoon. At around 5:20 in the afternoon, the Westbound Zephyr showed up. He was scheduled to arrive in Glenwood Springs at 1:35. So much for timetables even though we were tickled to death that he was so late: we got to take his pix as well.

Zoom-Zoom. And this isn’t a Mazda out there.

Okay, so you’ve probably seen enough of the California Zephyrs for one day but here she is, in all her shining glory. Our travels tomorrow will follow the rails and river but we’ll probably only see mile long freight trains.

I’d like to end this post with a thought that has entered my mind for several days now. We have been in areas that simply cannot be properly shown by a single picture, or a ton of same. I think that what I need to do is mount a wide angle camcorder on the roof of the car and shoot away. We can then share what we have seen, at least through the windshield (we don’t rent a convertible) with all of you. Anyone want to provide us with this for our trip to Washington (State) next September?

Ah, dreams. Tomorrow after the river and rails we will be heading for Estes Park, via the Rocky Mountain National Park..

Sunday morning saw us taking, after breakfast, the gravel County Road east, with three stops along the way. There are two locations along the river, accessible from the main road, at which rafters, kayakers, you know, can put in or take out for or from their river journey. The waters between the easternmost of these sites to the park we stayed at last night are relatively quiet, with nothing greater than a level one rapids. The ride down can take much of a day if you choose and it looked like fun to us.Each of these stops had camping facilities, and services in Kremmling would bring the rented raft to the put in site, bring your vehicle to the take out site, and say “Happy Landings“..

As we headed east along this roadway we were hopeful for some train activity, but found none before Inspiration Point. This is the spot where I dearly wanted a train. Here you can see why the trains don’t average 60 MPH. Notice the tight curve going into the very short tunnel. This is also a great spot to see one of the mile long coal trains, taking coal from somewhere west and hauling it somewhere upstream. Can you picture one of these? Three locomotives on the front, two or three in the middle and two pushers on the back end. And, being able to see and photograph this from Inspiration Point.

We drove through the several miles of the Byers Canyon, another fantastic gorge cut by the Colorado and the first of the narrow gorges the railroads had to overcome to get their products west. This is absolutely the best area we were in to get great pictures of trains, water, scenery, and roads. However, everything was present today except the trains. Maybe another day, sometime…..

After reaching Grandby, we said goodbye to the world of trains and the Colorado River, which was heading north up to its birthplace. We followed the Trail Ridge Road all the way to Estes Park, without pictures and without commentary. We’ll spend the day doing this tomorrow.

MONDAY, 09/20/2010 - ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK

Well today we went back up into the nosebleed area. We stopped off first at the Library to take care of all our Internet issues and then headed out on the Old Fall River Road, This road, put in sometime around 1920, was the original road from Estes Park to the top of the hill. The last nine miles of this road are still gravel, and the road has a zillion hairpin turns as it climbs the mountain, but, its not scary.

At one location near the top, the Alpine Visitor’s Center comes into view. This is quite a place, where everything imaginable is for sale: expensive and probably made in China. By the way, much of the road looks like this, after you pass the treeline.

What goes up must come down (Yogi Berra or Einstein?) This is the view of a part of the previously mentioned roadway, taken from the parking area outside the Visitor’s Center. We are at 11,396 feet, and it is cool out. This place has been a zoo, yesterday and today, as it seems that half the World is visiting Rocky Mountain NP this week.

We began the descent down the mountain, stopping at the viewpoints, but frankly none of them fired us up. As we neared town we ran into an “Elk Jam”. At first I thought we were back in Yellowstone when it then dawned on me that Elk are big deal up here. So, we joined the jam and parked. We were able to crowd our way into the forest of viewers to get this picture of four of the girls, I think they’re girls.

After we arrived in town we went for a long walk, bumming the stores, and enjoying the River Walk.

On Tuesday we drove up into the Park and took the Bear Lake Road up to the Stop-and-Ride location. There is so much traffic in this area that the Park Service has provided shuttle buses, that run every ten minutes from the parking lot up to the Lake. So, we parked and took the bus. We walked up the trail a short ways to Bear Lake and relived a very precious moment. In 1958, Ethel and I took a six weeks trip out west, with Karen, four, and Craig, two.

At this very spot we took their picture, with Bear Lake in the background. Not sure where the picture is: was it a slide or a glossy? All I know is that I took the picture on my Rollei. Do any of you guys remember the Rollei? The Lake is as beautiful as ever.

There was quite a bit of color on the mountainside today, probably because we were at an elevation of almost 9500 feet. We considered walking the trail around the Lake but a number of 16 % grades were involved: 16 % at 9500 feet makes one consider Plan B; back to the trailhead.

Plan B became a half mile hike up to Nymph Lake. As it turned out, that half mile was uphill all the way, but it was worth it. Nymph Lake is quite small, was covered with lilies (I think), and those enormous peaks were in the background.

We worked our way back to the bus stop and were graciously driven to the parking lot. From there we drove back uphill to the parking area for Sprague Lake, which turned out to be a day maker. The lake has a half mile trail circling  it and as we started out a man approached us to say that “a moose is feeding on the other side of the lake and a hundred people are watching”. We saw some activity, saw the moose, but took our time getting there.

Well sure enough, there he was. The trail adjoins the water and our friendly moose was standing no more than 30 feet from the hundreds (make that 20) people who were silently watching and taking pictures galore. This guys a beauty, eh?

Our new friend had a very simple diet. He was feasting on all of the green plant life that was floating around and once in a while he’d go down to the bottom and grab some fresh stuff.

We said goodbye to Mr. Moose and continued our walk around the lake. The day was very windy and the lake waters were kicking up quite a bit. I’d love to see this picture when the lake is a sheet of glass and the mountains reflected.

We finally left the park and headed back to the B & B. Sat out on the front porch until it got cool and then went up to the common room to hang out. There is a large picture window and the view is quite nice, so I’ll sign off this post with the view.

On Wednesday, we checked out and spent much of the day driving through some incredible areas. We started out by heading east through the Big Thompson Canyon, which was carved out by the, surprise, the Big Thompson River. We then diverted north a bit and took another windy mountain road up to the city of Glen Haven. There is a general store in town that sells home maid cinnamon buns. Because it was still too close to breakfast, we were forced to put the buns in storage for awhile. When we ate them later, the advertising was true; they’d give Cinnabons a good race. OK, back into the vehicle and follow the road back to Estes Park. We continued south, hooking up with the Peak to Peak Scenic Byway, which runs down to around Blackhawk. We didn’t take any pictures today because the incredible scenery was just too much to try to photograph. It was a rousing finish to our Colorado adventure as we have seen indescribable formations, rushing rivers, towering mountains, and much of what our Lord has provided in this state.

I’d like to close this 2010 blog with some of the words of a very well known hymn, as they certainly do apply to Ethel and I as we consider this wonderful state.

When through the woods
And forest glades I wander
I hear the birds
Sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down
From lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook
And feel the gentle breeze;

Then sings my soul,
My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art!
How great Thou art!