Wilderness Wandering

September 24-26

As we left the Denver area, we took a pitstop at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. What an amazing place. We both would like to attend a concert there sometime!

We drove 6+ hours from Denver over the Rocky Mountains and arrived on the North side of the Black Canyon of The Gunnison at sunset. The drive was truly gorgeous, but some of those mountain passes are really steep. Tim commented  “You grab the door when you’re nervous.”  Indeed I do! You know that not in control thing??

Black Canyon of the Gunnison is a really interesting National Park! It is called the Black Canyon because the walls are so steep that the bare off the canyon sees very little sunlight.

It is a bit of a hike to reach it, but what gorgeous views await you!

The canyon was carved out by The Gunnison River over millions of years.  The park protects the deepest and most spectacular 12 miles of the 48 mile long canyon. The park consists of two sections – North and South Rims.

Campsites on the north rim are first come, first serve and there are only 16 of them, and as far as we could tell in the dark, none were available.  So we had to improvise a bit on our camp spot. We weren’t there only ones. We parked at the trailhead of the  Chasm View Trail.

When I woke up, the sun was rising, so I hopped out of the van to see if there was a view. 

WAS THERE A VIEW!!!

A short walk down a trail lead to the Chasm View of The Painted Wall. The wall rises 2250 feet from river to rim. That is taller than two Empire State Buildings! It is the third tallest wall in the lower 48 states.

From rim to rim it’s 1100 feet.

Some very crazy brave people scramble down into the canyon and others rock climb the walls. You need a special permit for both. 

We met a younger couple that had a roof top tent. The roof top tent was something we had considered when we began discussing a National Parks Tour. The couple descended the gorge the previous day. The woman said it was really hard and that there was poison ivy 6 feet tall and stinging nettle everywhere. 

After breakfast, we did the North Rim Trail, a pretty 3 mile hike with excellent views. 

Next we drove to the South Rim. 

Not as  simple as it sounds. We had to drive back to the small town of Crawford. It’s about a 3 hour drive.  

We wanted a thermos of ice, so we could have Old Fashioneds that evening. We stopped at about the only restaurant in town that was open, Pat’s Bar and Grill. Jessica waited on us and was happy to give us ice. Tim spotted pie in the refrigerator case, so we ended up with a piece of pecan pie to go with dinner.  

We stopped at the South Unit to take our National Parks picture. Then we headed into the campground. We had a reservation at this campground! We set up camp and drove to the Visitor Center. The visitor center itself was beautiful and there was a spectacular viewing platform a short hike away. Even if you don’t do anything more than the south rim drive and the VC view, you get a very good sense of the park. 

After a wonderful dinner, steak in the air fryer for Tim and a great salad for me, plus sweet potato, we attended a Ranger talk about the “ologies” of the park. The “ologies” were the geology, geography, sociology, etc. of the area.  By the time the talk was over, the temperature had really dropped!

We headed back to the van and tried to fire up Mr. Buddy heater.

 Mr. Buddy heater worked great this time!  It went from freezing to unbearably hot in about 15 minutes! We also had our Old Fashioneds and pie upon our return. 

My cheeks were pink. Probably due to both the warm temperature of the van and the delicious Old Fashioned. We toasted to Greg Taylor who was instrumental in helping Tim build the Old Fashioned kit.

We got up to catch the sunrise.  It was pretty. After breakfast, we headed back to the VC and did the 3 mile Oak Flat Loop. The trail was labeled strenuous, but we did not think it deserved more than a moderate rating.  The colors were phenomenal!

After the hike we drove into the town of Montrose to do important errands like laundry. We took advantage of the  laundromat’s wifi to catch up on email and some other business and charged the Jackery.  We topped off the gas tank. It freaks one out a little when you see signs on the highway “No services for 90 miles!”

We also stopped off at the Montrose Public Library and Montrose Visitor’s Center. We are heading to UT tomorrow and we wanted a little info about State Parks of CO and UT in the area we are going. I had heard Dead Horse State Park in UT is a great one, but didn’t really know why. 

I have to say the the staff at the Montrose VC was exceptionally helpful! We wrote a few postcards while we were there and headed back to the NP. 

We changed campsites tonight to one with electricity. We want to have everything charged up, because we may be boondocking for a few nights. 

So we set up camp and set out for Warner Point to catch sunset. It was a 1.5 mile round trip.  Sunset was spectacular! The view was a little hazy because there is a wildfire in western CO the smoke is passing over Black Canyon of Gunnison. 

That’s a wrap for BC of G. We really enjoyed this park. It isn’t one you need to spend a week at. You could do much of it in 1 day, but we are happy we did both rims. Once again, we really liked the North one because there were fewer people.