2012/06 Western USA trip - Colorado National Monument |
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Wednesday June 27th
We had one day before we had committed to be in Steamboat Springs. I’d originally planned to visit the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. The canyon has spectacular views of the streaks of coloured granite in the 3000 foot cliffs, but there isn’t much to do there. So, instead, we were going to the Colorado national monument, which has more to look at and a few trails. First though we visited Glenwood Springs for some shopping.
We set off down the Colorado River valley, sometimes in a canyon and sometimes in a wide, irrigated valley, until we reached Grand 
Junction and turned off to the park. The entrance to the park is through a tunnel, which was signed as too low for us, but the ranger told us not to worry, just drive in the middle of the road. She was right, but it was just luck we didn’t meet anyone else doing the same.
It was a 19 mile drive to the campground, and most of that was on the outside of a narrow, winding road that hugged the rim of the canyon, without any barriers between us and the thousand foot sheer cliff. John and Edna said the scenery down below was spectacular, but all I saw was the road.
After 19 miles of being twelve inches from heaven, Sandie refused to go back on that road at all. This was a surprise to me as we’d been there twice before, in ’78 and ’79, without quite the same reaction. I remember some discussions about nightmares where the undercut road dropped into the canyon, but that was different.
After setting up in the campground, John and Edna and I walked some of the trails around the canyon rim. Far off to the north we could see a big fire burning in the hills on the other side of the Colorado River valley. Sandie and I had driven in from that direction in 1978 after crossing a 
hundred miles of nothing but desert hills from Dinosaur national monument. It was one of our first experiences of how empty the American landscape can be.
The columns in the valley are the eroded remnants of the plateau we were walking on. We followed the rim trail around to where we had a view of an arch in the rock.
Back at the campground we were surprised to find that a bus-load of kids was camping to the back of us. They were surprisingly quiet considering how many were there.