Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

Google Maps claimed it was 3.5 hours from Great Sand Dunes to Black Canyon of the Gunnison: that's 4.5 in Reba time. Once again, the drive was stunning.
We arrived at the park entrance at 4 p.m. after a 6 mile, 1700 foot elevation gain drive with no pullouts that took Reba to the limits of her safe temperature range. We asked the Ranger if it would be like this in the park and she assured us that it was quite doable from there on.
The pictures do not do the grandeur of this area justice. If you have not been, add it to your must visit list.
We quickly hit 8000 steps just walking from the parking to the viewpoints 100 to several hundred yards away. We pulled out just before sunset and headed to Montrose for our first HarvestHost stay. We parked near a pond in the back lot of Shelter Distillery then went in to enjoy a delicious dinner and tasty beers for under $60 with tip (this is insanely cheap by Seattle standards). The evening and morning view from our free RV site.
Woke up to sunshine and headed towards Telluride for an afternoon hike. ViKing's musical selection for this portion of the trip: Doc Watson

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And so it begins

Image
I woke up this morning at 6:15 a.m. around the time my alarm usually goes off. I rolled over, refusing to get up before 8 a.m. on the first day off in my 7.5 month sabbatical and the 5th day of Gorm's retirement. We are spending the next few days packing the RV and cleaning the house up for the sitters before a several week trip starting with west coast Phish tour (Seattle>Portland>San Fran>L.A.). After tour ends, we head off on a 4200 mile adventure through some of our most gorgeous National Parks: Date Place 4/28-4/30 Joshua Tree 4/30-5/1 Lake Havasu State Park 5/1-5/4 Grand Canyon South Rim 5/4-5/5 Holbrook / Petrified Forest 5/5-5/6 Chimney Rock Dispersed Camping 5/6-5/8 Great Sand Dunes National Park 5/8-5/10 Black Canyon of the Gunnison South Rim 5/10-5/12 Free 5/12-5/14 Mesa Verde 5/14-5/15 Canyonlands National Park 5/15-5/17 Arches Goblin Valley and Segoe Canyon 5/17-5/18 Capitol Reef Grand Escalante national monument - 1 hour detour to mystic hot springs 5/18-5/21...
Read more

Hiccups Say Head Home

Image
We've reset the transmission a few times since our trouble in Santa Fe, and it worked when we had any hiccups. Unfortunately, after Ogden, Reba (our 1995 VW Eurovan Rialta) wasn't interested in any gear after 3rd. Gorm looked at me stressed and said, "we're going home, we'll hit these parks again another time." We were under 700 miles from home, so I canceled all of our remaining camping reservations and we headed towards Seattle. We could rarely break 50 in 3rd so it took us several hours to reach Boise. We had a HarvestHost reservation there and camped peacefully overnight. Our plan was to hit another HarvestHost in Ellensburg Sunday at a brewery. Sadly after gassing up in Pendleton, we lost 3rd too. We managed to exit the highway and roll into a parking lot. There was a dead dear with only the legs recognizable desicating on the barbed wire fence...We called AAA and asked for a tow. After 3 hours of no help, we started Reba and drove in 2nd 7 miles to a ...
Read more

California Dreaming

Image
After an amazing hometown Phish run in Seattle, we hopped into Reba, our 1995 Rialta. The odometer was at 48,000 when we hit the road for an overnight at our friend's Juan and Kat's house in Portland to see the first Phish show there since 1999. We had one day free to make it to the Tuesday show in San Francisco 635 miles away. Mt. Shasta greeted us as we crossed into California. We overnighted at Beehive Dispersed Camping with our friend Seth about 8 hours into the drive...Reba takes time to make it over the passes. A gorgeous spot on a lake, especially considering the free price tag. In the morning, we drove another 4 hours to San Francisco RV Resort. It was essentially a parking lot a 20 minute Lyft from the city, but the waterfront view from our window would be hard to beat. We grabbed a delicious vegetarian lunch Wednesday with our friend Billy and the harbor seals came out to greet us. The Wednesday show in San Francisco was my favorite of the run. A real burner. We did w...
Read more