Colorado Day 4: Glenwood Hot Springs to Mesa Verde National Park via Colorado National Monument and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park:

 This was THE BIG DAY. We started by driving west to Colorado National Monument. After a long drive on a flat valley, the plateau rises up and there is a stunning canyon caused by erosion through that lifted up rock. The CCC built the 20-mile long Rim Rock Drive that traces the edge of the canyon for much of the park. I think I liked this Colorado Monument more than the Grand Canyon because there were hardly any other visitors, the road was uncrowded, and we could stop into the viewpoints and pullouts with ease. We saw many different formations along this drive and also the short hike at the Saddlehorn Visitor Center. These included: Independence Monument, Kissing Couple, the Coke Ovens, and Red Canyon. Red Canyon (a canyon within a canyon) had a really neat echo-wall feature that bounded sound around a curve and back again. At the southern end of the drive was a hike to the Devil’s Kitchen rock formation which was really neat to climb around. 

We then headed a couple hours south to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. I wasn’t even sure if we should visit this park due to not ever having heard of it. However, it wowed us with its grandeur right off the bat. We stuck to exploring this one by driving the south canyon rim and going to the visitor center. Along the rim there were places to park and walk xxx amount of yards to a particular look out. It was a hot day, but the effort was rewarded with magnificent views of a stunning black rock canyon that has 2000’ walls at a 93 degree slope. The canyon is very narrow in places (40 meters wide) with a band of a bright green Gunnison River cascading along the canyon floor. The most impressive view was of Painted Wall at Cedar Point. It is the tallest wall in the canyon at 2250’ and light pink, igneous, pegmatite bands of rock cross through the black, metamorphic gneiss rock making it appear like a giant slab of veined marble. It had been super hot up on the canyon rim, so we treated ourselves to a stop at Dairy Queen afterwards. 

Then it was time to drive up and over the mountains near the Telluride area. We crossed at Lizard Pass which seemed like it was over 13,000’. We were treated to beautiful scenery throughout the drive but were slightly nervous because the SUV we’d rented wasn’t happy with its engine being pushed on the pass. We came down out of the mountains into the western cattle town of Cortez which was part of the Spanish Trail cattle route a hundred years ago. We had dinner at a local brewery and met the owners’ daughter who told us about their story. We had fun playing Trivial Pursuit at the table. We had one last push another 30 minutes south to Mesa Verde National Park and the Far View Hotel inside the park. It was delightful to have a balcony that looked out over the stars. Stargazing is a leading attraction here and the park and area feature Dark Skies. We saw so many stars, at least one planet, and even meteors / shooting stars.