Megan woke up this morning and was ready for the day to start. She had been talking about Mesa Verde for as long as I can remember all because as a child she came here with her family and there was a forest fire that started soon before they were to arrive. The fire closed down the park and they were left pining to get in and she has never been back.
As I followed after Megan to the bathroom to wash up, a deer trotted in between us and Megan was oblivious to it all. After finding out the showers were only in the main convenience store we brushed our teeth and went to pay for our previous nights stay, as we had arrived after they closed the night before. There was a new lady working at the check-out counter and because we were so patient as she went through all of our information the manager gave us some free coffee and hot chocolate and a bag of ice, which seemed overly generous but greatly appreciated.
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| Balcony House at Mesa Verde |
Since we were staying in the park we were able to make it to the visitors center as they opened up and signed up for a tour of "Balcony House" and "Cliff Palace." It was still another 35 minute drive down to the dwellings so we kept on moving down to our tour site. We unfortunately got stuck behind a slow moving bus as the windy road kept the large vehicle moving at a snail's pace. But then as luck would have it, the bus pulled off to the side, the 7 cars in front of us all stupidly followed the bus, we zipped by them all and had a good laugh at the idiot drivers in the other cars.
We were still laughing when we started out first tour at Balcony House and our tour guide, Bill, was great. He made us really think about how life was in rock dwelling, which would have been rough but having a weather proof shelter would definitely have made life easier.
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| Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde |
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| Remnants of Megan's Forest Fire |
As for Cliff Palace, the tour was amazing. The dwelling could house more than 125 people at once and the protection it created was something else. The stairway up to the dwelling was just little slits in the rock face that was used as hand and foot holds to rock climb up the wall. Our tour guide here talked extensively about corn the amazing way the Native Americans went about cultivating the best crops to continually grow bigger and large plants. He also told us that Megan's forest fire (the one she saw; she didn't start a forest fire, at least one that we know of) would take another 300 years before the forest was fully restored to it's full grown state.
We left Mesa Verde and actually drove back east a touch, we quickly stopped that when we reached Durango. We stopped for some lunch and a walk around town. It had a lot of shops selling cowboy type stuff and western souvenirs. We ended up finding RGB Wraps, a little place inside an office building that was making up fresh wraps. We got them to go because it was such a nice day and wanted to eat outside, or maybe we weren't used to being inside buildings for that long and felt more comfortable outdoors. We grabbed our wraps and found a picnic table in a park along the river which was covered in cotton from cottonwood trees.
We also stopped at a gas station to check on the oil because the check oil light had come on a couple days prior. We didn't think we would need to do anything with the oil as we had it changed right before we left but we wanted to make sure. The oil looked good however, the coolant was running dangerously low so we filled it back up and we were on our way north towards Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
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| Views on the Drive between Durango and Montrose |
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| Views on the Drive between Durango and Montrose |
We were expecting a two hour drive, without much expectation for anything else and quickly we discovered we were in for a treat. The drive between Durango and Montrose on Co Hwy 550 is incredible! The views of the San Juan Mountains were amazing. We took our time on the drive, stopping a few times to get out and take in the views of mountains, trees, rivers, waterfalls, peaks, and valleys. We were disappointed when we reached the edge of Montrose because we knew the drive had ended but from Montrose you had views looking back on the mountain range that were breathtaking.
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| More Views on the Drive |
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| Looking Back at the San Juan Mountains |
We stopped in Walmart to pick up some groceries to make dinner and continued the few miles left to Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We stopped at the visitors center but they were closing so we just grabbed a map and we were on our own. We went to the camp grounds and we were delighted to find out that the campsite cost $6 per night. We quickly set up camp and made a quick trip out of the park to pick up some firewood before checking out the Black Canyon.
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| Black Canyon of the Gunnison |
We had never heard of Black Canyon of the Gunnison until the day before we were to leave the Chicago area. We went to the grocery store to pick up supplies and at the checkout counter there was a magazine of Must See National Parks. We couldn't not buy it so we used that to give us some ideas and Black Canyon of the Gunnison was one those ideas, and I knew it was going to be amazing just by the name of it, which is why I like using the full name, Black Canyon of the Gunnison.
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| Black Canyon of the Gunnison |
We were driving from lookout point to lookout point checking out the amazing views. The canyon is very much worthy of its name; it is black rock faced, or at least the sun doesn't reach the rock walls and they appear black. The canyon is very narrow at some points only a few hundred feet from rim to rim yet and it is incredibly steep and deep. At one point the canyon is over 2000 feet down and leaves you backing away from the edge. There were some small birds that were flying around the lookout points, likely knowing that humans bring food, and these birds were daredevils flying inches from your head. We kept describing it as being zoomed. We watched the sunset from the aptly named Sunset View before heading back to camp.
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| Sunset over the Black Canyon of the Gunnison |
We made some dinner on the fire and watched as the colors from dusk turned into a pitch black night. We had some bbq chicken, watermelon, macaroni and cheese with our beers before hitting the hay for the night.
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