Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

2019-10-07 Monday

Joey and I both slept really soundly last night--so much so that we were quite unprepared when the alarm went off this morning. I personally could have easily slept another hour. But needs must, so we got ourselves together, walked the dog, tweaked something on the tire (I forget what), and left Green River at about 10:00, as usual. Less than an hour later, we were in “Wild, Wonderful Colorado.”

We followed US 50 (which was still twinned with I-70) to Grand Junction, then peeled off toward Delta and Montrose. We had decided to go to the visitor center at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, look around, and then decide if we were staying or not. We’d gone past the turnoff to the park a couple of times, most recently in 2015. I decided maybe it was time for us to go there, before we really hit the road hard to get home.

We arrived at the turnoff at about 2:30pm, which was what I’d anticipated. What no one had told me about this park was that it is HIGH UP! I knew it was 6 miles after the turnoff from US 50. But almost immediately we began to climb. And climb. And climb. I was driving and we were getting nowhere fast!

View of Canyon Walls from an overlook

At about mile 3, when I’d been driving in first gear for a while, we finally found a large enough turnout that we could get off the road and consult the map. Lo and behold, this darn park is 8,000 feet elevation!!  Had we any clue, we’d have unhooked the Jeep at the turnoff. So that’s what we did at mile 3-- detached the Jeep, and I drove that and Joe followed in the RV, just as we had previously on our way west. The RV had no problem at all once the 3,000 extra pounds weighing down the tail end was removed.

We arrived at the visitor center a little short of breath, both from the ascent and the 8,000 feet once we arrived. I talked to someone about some ideas, and decided our plans had now changed-- after all the trouble it had been to get up the mountain into the park, we were NOT about to just look around quickly and leave. So we went to the campground and found a nice pull-through site and got ourselves set up there. Then, around 4:30 or so, we took the Jeep on the 7-mile Rim Road which leads to overlooks of the park.

Very Narrow Canyon

The Black Canyon is pretty amazing, with its steep dark walls and being so narrow. It is very vertiginous to look down at the various view points, and since the paths tend to slant down to those views, I was constantly feeling a bit off balance. Joe was feeling exhausted, and I was pretty huffy and puffy from the thin air. So we didn’t stop at all of the viewpoints, particularly because most of them required a short hike (300 yards or so) to get to them. We finished up at Sunset Point, and waited until the sun went down. The view of the mountains was very pretty.

All in all, I did not fall in love with this park the way I did at Lassen or Olympic NP. The Black Canyon is really impressive, but to me lacked the same spirituality as Lassen or the beauty of the Olympic Peninsula. So to each his own, I guess... we are glad we came up here, but it’s not a park I think I would return to.

Tomorrow we will head east again on US 50, and I am concerned because I remembered that in 2015, we took this route and crossed the 11,000 foot Monarch Pass. I told Joe, we are going to have to unhook the Jeep yet again after we leave here (we’ll plan to hook up tomorrow morning once we get down the mountain.) Sam made it over the Monarch Pass back then, and we have the photos to prove it, but not pulling a Jeep! At least I remembered ahead of time this time! And after that, we’ll probably be angling up to intercept I-70 again and drive hard through the midwest states. Once we leave Colorado, we’ll officially be in the midwest (Kansas, that is). And we’ll have left the beautiful western states behind us for this year.

Another View of an overlook with canyon walls beyond it

Gunnison River looking west toward mountains and sunset, from Sunset Point