RED(rum), WHITE(water), & BLUE(birds)- A Grand Finale TR to Our Year of the National Parks

[HouCuseChickie]

It's a pretty sheer drop and we were all pretty nervous getting too close to the edge. It was actually a good primer for our plans the next day. You'll see what I mean when I get to it.

There were lots of little stops along the way.

Sometimes you had to stand there and look at the crevices for a bit, but you'd often find structures if you stared and scanned long enough...

I forget how many national parks there are now (since there are some new ones), but Mesa Verde was #7. I can't remember exactly how it was put, but it's the only full blown park dedicated to man made structures and cultural preservation. I think that's part of the wow here too. It's in a beautiful setting, but instead of a focus on animals or even stories of some great explorer who discovered the gem (which it has those too)...you can't help but wonder about the people, the quality of life, and what actually happened to them.

As we were driving to the next site, I caught this along the way...

We tried to stop at the Balcony House, but there were no viewpoints in this area and we again didn't pay for the tour ...nor was Kendall wasn't dressed for climbing ladders.

In moving on, we saw a helicopter...looked like it might even be rangers.

So, I took some pics of the cool plants and some signs...

 

[HouCuseChickie]

...and then on to a Pithouse...

They really aren't much to look at, but when you consider the age of these structures and the number of people they held...well, it's all pretty remarkable.

We drove a bit more...

...before coming to the Square Tower House...another incredible structure.

And then as the sign says, pithouses and pueblos.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

It was around this point where we started really feel like we'd had our fill. We wanted to see the temple on the top of the cliff before heading out, but stopped at one of the better overlooks along the way for a few additional pictures....

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I know...it's a lot of pictures for someone who was done and ready to go, but there's always that internal conflict in things like this. On one hand, you're done, but on the other...you're probably never going to visit again and you feel like you should be soaking up as much as you can.

And then finally, the Sun Temple, which was disappointing since you can no longer go in (sounded like vandalism). Although, we did see some NPS people doing restoration repairs as well.

So, it was time to make the drive out of Mesa Verde. And let me just say, this is not a good time to get stuck behind a slow moving camper...

Of course we ended up behind construction after exiting the park...

Bear! LOL

Yeah...I'll tell you now...there were no living bears spotted on this trip.

We were also finally able to check into our hotel. The little signs were funny, but all in all, it was just nice to sit down and relax for a bit.

It's not amazing, but it's an ice room and the view is kind of neat...

 

[HouCuseChickie]

We rested a little and perused the various dining options. We went back and forth on a lot of things. So...we headed back out...

Like that each room has its own little pic...

Had to take a pic of the fun sign along the way...

And we had to make a stop at Walgreens first, since David busted another pair of reading glasses.

As you can see, there's weather coming in, but we never got much.

And this is what we decided on for dinner. Nothing overly exciting, but still tasty and the service was good.

Not sure why, but I had to take pics of the hills/mountains from the restaurant parking lot. I'm sure it's because we live in such a flat place.

As we left, I also took pics of the storms which had moved on.

I wanted dessert and there was nothing for me at the restaurant. So, we hit up the local Safeway.

Unfortunately, this location did not have all of the great things we found at the one in Estes Park, so I ended up with some coconut milk ice cream and shell topping. I know...so bad for me, yet soooooooooo good. It's not nearly as good as Magic Shell, but this stuff didn't have any dairy. Score!

The kids got more brownies...

And David decided to go with Colorado beer...

We were only here for this one night, so I spent the rest of the evening prepping stuff and repacking so we could move on like the nomads we were...for the time being!

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Coming up...We leave Cortez to head to Alamosa, but decide to double our travel time to add in another national park.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

DAY 11ish...heck, who knows?

I woke up and hit the gym. When I was done, I met the fam in the breakfast area. Again...nothing overly exciting, but complimentary food is always nice...and they had hard boiled eggs. Which is funny, because my kids kept confusing hard boiled with deviled...and I'd be so disappointed each time I found only hard boiled. This morning, it was "mom, today's deviled eggs are still in the shell!" OY! This place also had the thinnest bacon I've ever been served. I guess at least it was crispy. Still love all the little mouths on the cups...

After that, we headed back to the room to get everything to go. On a funny side note, this was our third area for different news coverage. In Denver, Estes Park and Rangely, it was all Denver news. In Moab, it was Salt Lake City news. In Cortez, it was Albuquerque news. It would go back to Denver news for all spots going forward.

Today was a day where I gave them options. Option 1 was to just drive west to Alamosa, CO, which is right near Great Sand Dunes NP. Option 2 was to save that park until the following morning and drive up to Black Canyon of the Gunnison NP before heading back down to Alamosa. We'd already been to four national parks and two national monuments...with at least one of each left to go, so everyone opted for seeing one more national park. Sooo... we headed to Black Canyon.

My pictures when we first started off were pretty meh. I think I was just tired too. I was all for taking a longer vacation, but the fatigue was setting in. While it was different than my escape plan in Rangely, I had started thinking about how long it might take to get to Denver and the odds of getting a same day flight home. And then I remembered how much whitewater rafting cost and how we were now outside of the refund window. So, I took pics to keep me into it.

Another mountain road that follows the river that helped cut its path...

We were definitely heading up! I know we also saw a number of magpies along the way.

I'm guessing my settings must have been off. We drove through this old little town and everything is a blur...

And just like that, it clears up again. The town must have been camera shy!

Although, it has occurred to me that this may be David and Sam taking the pictures. I know I drove at some point on this day and I'm pretty sure it was in the morning, so these are mainly their work.

The first part of this drive entailed going through the Telluride area, so we were climbing and the snow on the mountains was increasing...

We thought this was neat...like some ancient pattern.

Either way, it was nice to be back up in the mountains...

And how about some blurry deer!

There was a nice lake as we got higher...

 

[HouCuseChickie]

David also pointed out the tree variations...the super green vs. the darker and more mature. It's hard to tell in this pic, but most were pines.

We also were seeing the temps drop as we got higher. I think it was low 60s by this point...which also was met with a hearty REDROCKS from David...

Not sure about you, but this is the movers I want! LOL

More driving pics...

We stopped for some gas...cute little town...but I had absolutely no service. Over the course of the trip, we found that those of us with iPhones had more issues than the others with Samsungs. Oh well...I think this is where I took over the camera...

And someone was looking for wildlife...

I think she found a hawk...

And back to driving...

As you can see, the terrain is changing (and temps going up a bit)...

Something is growing...

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Imagine a road trip on this bad boy!

We were aiming for the town of Montrose for lunch. David kept saying he wanted to spare the budget and go to chains and fast food, but when it came time to decide...we always wound up with things we can't get at home. So, here's where we ended up...

This place was cute.

I took a few pics of us while we waited...

They started out with some fried mushrooms.

And I caught these two goofing around.

Looks like I even captured K's nail. We were on her all trip to cut or bite off that one long nail and she constantly refused. Sorry...just one of those things that kept coming up. She does this at home too and the OCD part of me always wants her to even them out.

We weren't trying to eat anything huge since we'd had a lot for breakfast. Sam just got mashed potatoes and gravy...which looks more like a cup of gravy.

K's onion rings looked amazing!

David's grilled ham and cheese looked uninspired.

Coleslaw, anyone?

As for my food...I'm guessing they put cheese on it in error, because everyone was just about done and the kitchen still hadn't finished mine. I wound up getting it to go. It was just OK.

Cute wreath on the way out.

We passed their local rec center as we started making our way to the highway. I love how they all seem to have these slides that start inside, go out and then come back in.

And we're driving...

Looks like someone's personal observatory...

Almost there!

Or so we thought...This whole next part of the drive is residential. It winds up into the hills for quite a ways. There are school bus stops up here, which must be a pure beast in the winter months. In a lot of these mountain areas, you'll see big arms that can come down to close off the roads in bad weather or all winter, I guess, in some cases. We didn't see any of that here, so I would assume this stretch of road gets a lot of help when it gets cold.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

We also could see some weather coming in, so we were a bit concerned.

And here's the official sign!

And there's a line!

I don't think it gets the traffic like they see at other parks, so there's only a signle guard shack.

And we're in...

We didn't have a ton of time, so we agreed to stop at the first overlook, the visitor center and two overlooks farther down the canyon. This is the first overlook...

Someone taking a smarter selfie!

I wandered down the trail a bit tp see if I could get any more interesting views/angles...

As I was heading back up, I encountered this woman who looked lost and distraught. It turns out, she was looking for her daughter. This woman looked like she was early 60s and not really dressed for hiking. I hadn't seen the girl, but she gave me a description. As we were driving in to our next stop, I saw a girl...maybe late teens/early twenties...who had a side braid just like mom described and wearing a similar panicky look on her face. I told David to slow down and I yelled out the window to this girl. Turns out, I found her. So, I told her where her mom was and hoped that they were able to meet up. No cell service, but I'm gathering they finally met up with each other at some point.

We parked at the visitors center and headed in.

We played a little inside...

...but decided to head out to the overlook, which is called Gunnison Point.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I'm also really hoping the upcoming pics and video do this justice, because on top of it being amazing...it is a LONG LONG LONG way down. All of those railing and edge fears in previous parks were nothing compared to the anxiety this caused all of us. On a positive note, the people visiting all seemed to have a deep respect for all of this. I didn't see anyone right on the edge of the cliffs and when walking the paths and trails, everyone was giving a little extra space and watching their steps very carefully. But hey...there was still time to photograph the small stuff too!

We made our way down to the overlook at this spot...

I even remembered to take some video. In fact, I took video at our next two stops as well!



This is about the first time my fear of heights really started to kick in. Just looking at this pic makes me hyperventilate a bit...because there is nothing but straight down from here...

Time to walk back up to the car...

Sam grabbed some water before we moved on. In her defense, the thing was shooting out water...but we kept laughing at her because it was so comical to see her try and find a drinking spot in the stream.

We went a little farther down the way. I had wanted to go to Devils Outlook, but I was outvoted and stop three was Chasm View. There was even a ranger doing a daily demonstration here when we arrived. Apparently, we had just missed a golden eagle. Although, I didn't know why he chose to take over the overlook area for this...as people were having to step over the group in a setting that already made people nervous.

As unnerving as the drop was at the previous viewpoint, it was even scarier here.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Time to head back to the car...

We moved on to the next spot. As you can see, once again...we are asked to stay on the trail.

I had to tell this one to keep her hands out of the boulders. You never know what's living in there ... or worse ... you might shift the balance and cause that part on top to come crashing down.

Still moving closer to the end of the trail...

And now we're at the Painted Wall view. I tried really hard to stop and appreciate the view...and then turned around. This just feels so scary high at this point. I mean, it is so stunning in person, but it also made me want to curl up in the front seat of the car.

David was reading something about this portion of the canyon being as deep as two Empire State Buildings. I'd also read that the narrowest part of the canyon only sees about 35 minutes of sunlight a day...hence the Black Canyon naming.

And these are many of the birds we could see.

We took a few pics on our way back to the car.

I never got a picture of it, but we saw a herd of cows on the non-canyon side on the drive in. Not sure if the park boundaries end on that side or if they share the park with ranchers. You can see it on the map https://www.nps.gov/blca/planyourvisit/upload/BLCAmap_2013_w-masthead.pdf It's just sort of bizarre to me to have private property inside the boundaries of a national park. It did also prompt another Samantha zinger that we used for the rest of the trip...WILDERCOWS! I think she was thinking BTMRR and "The Wildest Ride in the WILDNERNESS." Either way, we saw a TON of wildercows this trip. HA! On top of that, it really added to David's cravings for steaks. LOL

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Coming up- we finish up at Black Canyon and make the long, but scenic drive to Alamosa

 

[MinnieM123]

I love seeing snow on the mountain tops in summer!

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I love seeing snow on the mountain tops in summer!

Me too!!! It never got old and always seemed to take me by surprise.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

If you look at the map in the link above, in the bottom right quadrant, you'll see "East Portal Road." This is supposed to take you down to the Gunnison River. As you can also see, this is not a straight road, nor does it have a ton of the traditional switchbacks you'd associate with major elevation changes. We drove part of the way down...

...but it was soooooooooo steep and we started hitting blind spots and single lane spots, some of which had no mirrors to show oncoming vehicles. So, this is where we stopped.

And we're thinking wew were probably only between 1/3-1/2 of the way down.

So we headed back up and headed out of Black Canyon.

We stopped really quickly in Cimarron on the way out. Definitely another tiny place.

Someone needed to stretch her legs and visit me while we were waiting on David...

Time to hit the road. We were relying mainly on satellite radio during this trip and we got a good laugh out of this...we came to this station expecting Jimmy Buffet and wind up with James Taylor.

Oh well...usual pics as we drive...and our bug collection just keeps getting bigger.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

We started heading east towards Gunnison and wound up going through the Curecanti Ntl. Rec. Area, which looked pretty neat....well, the lake looked nice.

This just made me laugh. It seemed like a destination Gonzo would drag the Muppets.

Still driving through the rec area...

We finally made it to Gunnison, which was much bigger than I expected. I guess I didn't realize that Gunnison and Crested Butte are sort of tied together.

After going through the Gunnison area, we turned on a little road that was heading southeast. It was in a valley most of the way, and like usual, we were following a nice little stream.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I don't know why, but I kept having troubles with taking video...not that it's the most interesting thing to see.



And of course, there were wildercows!

And we're heading back into the woods...

And some REDROCKS!

And it's looking pretty stormy up ahead...

Colorado has so many Federal rec areas and national forests that I started to lose track of what we were in. At this point, it's the Gunnison National Forest...

And then the Rio Grande...

I remember trying to take video in this section, but I guess my videography skills were zapped and I was doing it all backwards. So, no vids...just pics. And to be honest, it all kind of blends at this point. At least Sam and I like rainy gloomy weather, so we were pretty happy.

I remember taking this pic...the first of several...to show that the clouds were so thick that you couldn't see the mountains.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

We stopped in the town of Saguache to stretch our legs and get some drinks. We met some really nice people...both patrons and employees, but there was this one jerk at the bathroom who still ranks as one of more bizarre people we encountered during the trip. The place had one inside bathroom and 6 port-a-potties outside. Nobody was waiting for the bathroom, so David and Sam got in line. This guy, who had been milling around the store...shopping we assumed, came back over to the bathroom. At first they were making small talk and then this guy abruptly changed the topic and gruffly said he was next in line. He didn't seem quite right and we weren't in the mood to mess with him, so we all used the port-a's outside.

This place also didn't have normal sized sodas...which was a theme for the afternoon. The place in Cimarron only had minis and this place only had big ones...which I had to babysit for the rest of the ride.

So, we kept heading southeast, towards Alamosa, CO.

See, you would never even know there are big mountains out there.

We hit the town of Monte Vista, CO before turning off and were surprised by going over the Rio Grande River. Great pic, right?

We also noticed that potato farming was the big business here. It looks like this is the home of Mountain King potatoes...which I sometimes buy. LOL Either way, it's a neat looking town after you past the potato farms.

See, we went from bean central near Cortez to potato country!

And that school bus we saw earlier in the day could totally park here!

Things were pretty quiet after leaving Monte Vista, but I knew Alamosa was right up the road.

There wasn't much to really photograph in Alamosa upon entry. We passed a few decent places for lodging that everyone was wishing I'd booked...since they looked like places we'd stayed before that we liked. There was nothing wrong with the Best Western I booked here...but it was definitely more motel style. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but we were on the second floor and had a lot of luggage. Still, the staff was very friendly (after giving me a heart attack about joking that they gave away my room) and the rooms were decent...

It had an indoor pool, but we were there only for a night and I needed bathing suits ready for upcoming stuff, so I didn't want them getting all nasty. So...not pool kids! Sorry.

We had a tough time deciding on dinner. One of the top rated places was a Mexican buffet and it appeared to be well rated because of the price (not the quality). While we've had some Mexican on this trip and most was OK, we get a lot of really good authentic Mexican and Tex Mex at home and we just didn't want to play the cheap Mexican buffet game. One of the other top rates spots was Chilis (which should say something about our options)...so, we just went with that. Nothing exciting, but it's food.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Sam and I both took sky pics on the way back...and after we got back.

Oh yea...that's the pool...

After this, we got everything situated for checking out and moving on. Life of nomads! When we were watching the news, we saw something about a mudslide up on I70 in Glenwood Springs, CO. It looked ugly, but everyone seemed to be OK. David's big concern was if it would impact our travels. Thankfully, no...but it did make us aware that mudslides are a concern we'd need to keep our eye on with all of the snow melt and storms impacting the mountains. Little did we know that it would have a partial impact on our next day.

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Coming up- we visit Great Sand Dunes NP and then head to Buena Vista, CO...home of Browns Canyon NM and whitewater rafting on the Arkansas River.

 

[MinnieM123]

If you look at the map in the link above, in the bottom right quadrant, you'll see "East Portal Road." This is supposed to take you down to the Gunnison River. As you can also see, this is not a straight road, nor does it have a ton of the traditional switchbacks you'd associate with major elevation changes. We drove part of the way down...

...but it was soooooooooo steep and we started hitting blind spots and single lane spots, some of which had no mirrors to show oncoming vehicles. So, this is where we stopped.

I don't blame you -- that can be really scary. There were a few roads in Colorado, that I recall were dicey like that.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I don't blame you -- that can be really scary. There were a few roads in Colorado, that I recall were dicey like that.

Supposedly, it's quite beautiful down there, but our poor rental was already struggling with the uphill and this was much steeper than anything we'd experienced. We'd already spent more time than planned in the park, so it's probably for the best.