Colorado National Parks (3)
September 24-30, 2006
| Early in the morning we left
Ouray (remember, that's
"Your-Ray" and headed north. We picked up a Geologist in Montrose and
proceeded to Black Canyon National Park. This probably is the most
recent National Park, but it was a National Monument until Clinton upgraded
it. The rock here is all "really old", even by Geological time. It's estimated to be more than 2.8 billion years and is titled "Pre-Cambrian" It's a metamorphic rock (slate?) that's been rotated vertical, then eroded. So you get very sharp edges. |
 |
 |
The river is very steep, about 4 times the angle of the Colorado as it
passes through the
Grand Canyon. In fact, the Gunnison River loses more height in 48
miles than the Mississippi does in 1,500 miles. As a result, you end
up with very steep walls, this 1800' canyon was cut in only 2 million years. There are no formal trails down. If you wish to go down, you register with the ranger and off you go. They estimated that it would take 1 hour to walk roughly 1 mile of trail going down, and another 3 hours to come back up. |
| We traveled from Montrose north up to Grand Junction to visit the
Colorado National Monument. Our geologist came with us, he leading the
way on his motor cycle, we following somewhat more sedately in our bus. This National Monument has at the top fairly recent rocks (like 2 million years old), then layer after layer leading down to small pieces of pre-Cambrian rock at the bottom. |
 |
 |
The rim trail 23 miles long wrapping around all the canyons of the park.
One quickly gets overwhelmed with the variety, but also somewhat jaded at
the repeated layers and layers of color. This picture was taken from the bus, then color corrected (I hope) to minimize the distortion of the tinted windows. You can see in the center of the canyon the small outcrops of the black rock we saw at Black Canyon. |
| As we left the park, we saw another example of a "balancing
rock", just like (well somewhat like) we saw in
Garden of the Gods. This photo was a "snapshot", Marnie pointed it out, I turned around and snapped as our bus went by. Guess it worked. |
 |
Saturday morning we got out at the regular time (on the rhythm "6-7-8, don't be late". Wake up calls at 6, breakfast at 7, on the road at 8.) We traveled I-70 due East, traveled over Colorado's new oil fields (allegedly more oil than in the Middle East, but I suspect some of that is embedded in shale, so hard to get out), then through the Glenwood Canyon. The views there are spectacular, but I couldn't get any good pictures out of the coach, and there's no spot within the canyon to stop a coach.
| After a break at Eagle (Burger King for leg stretch, etc.), we arrived at Georgetown for lunch. Georgetown was settled in 1860 when Gold was discovered. Nearby mines made it more of a support town than a mining town. In 1880, Georgetown was the 4th largest town in Colorado (probably not much bigger than it is now). |
 |
 |
Lunch had been pre-ordered, and unlike Friday, served quickly and efficiently. Even the extra charge drinks (like my Fat Tire beer) came quickly and the exchange of money did not get in the way of getting food out. |
| Today Georgetown is a tourist town. You can take the
Georgetown Loop train (1 hour ride), but you can't really walk from town to
the train station. The stores have been nicely restored and contain
the usual mixture of tourist stuff. Being end of season, much of it
was on sale (so maybe priced at normal non-tourist country prices).
Everywhere you looked, you could see mountains as backdrop. We are still at 8,000', so Marnie and I walked slowly and had no visible reaction to "not enough air in the air". |
 |
The rest of the trip was as you would expect. Down I-70 to Denver, south on the Beltway to I-25, the follow that to Colorado Springs. We stopped at the hotel long enough to check in (and we checked in on-line for Sunday's flights), then went on the Guiseppi's Depot restaurant for dinner. Dinner was pretty quick - the apparently hot-bedded our room, so as we were getting up from dinner, they were re-setting for another party.
|
|
|
