Colorado has something for everyone. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and on up to the Tundra region of Rocky Mountain National Park, where the wind is blowin’ and the snow is snowin’---or at least glaring at you from the lofty peaks. If you prefer the sauna, take a drop in altitude to 4593 feet and head west for Grand Junction, where afternoon temps scurry up to the century mark and beyond. After three days in Estes Park, one night in Grand Lake and two in Aspen, the Junction became our halfway point on the trip, the oasis where you warm up, do the laundry and replace your large suitcase at Kohl’s. Our senior piece of luggage was the victim of a scurrilous sneak attack at the Denver airport when a dazed baggage amateur tossed another massive suitcase right on top of it as it peacefully rode the conveyor belt, clipping one of the wheels and knocking it askew. We could still pull it along on three wheels but it was like dragging a dead body across shag carpet. If you signed up for a Kohl’s credit card, you could get a beauty at half-price. We did, and we’ve been getting daily messages about other wonderful bargains from that busy Mr. Kohl ever since.
Grand Junction, if you didn’t know, is a pleasant city of 67,000 in Colorado’s Western Slope region not far from the Utah border. GJ is base camp for the awesome Colorado National Monument and the hub of the state’s wine country. Uniquely, it has streets with labels like 25 1/2 Road, which intersects with F 1/2 Road a short distance from where 28 3/4 Road intersects with C 1/2. It’s enough to addle poor Siri’s brain. Lettered streets run east to west, the baseline being A Road in someplace called Orchard Mesa. Each subsequent letter is a mile north of the last, which is where the fractions come in. Got it? Good! Now let’s get to the numbered roads. They’re real easy. They just measure the distance from the Utah state line. So when Siri asks you to turn right at 28 1/2 Road, then turn left in a quarter mile at B 4/10 Road, you know you’re 28 1/2 miles from the Utah border and nearly 1 1/2 miles from Orchard Mesa. What about good old Elm Street? You can’t get there from here. And you thought Abbott and Costello were having trouble.
It’s Monumental
The Colorado National Monument is a 31-square mile wonderland administered by the National Park Service which boasts a concentrated version of Colorado’s red rock expanses, deep canyons and sandstone towers, all easily accessible via a 23-mile road through the area. Entered either from the west entrance near Fruita or the east from Grand Junction, Rim Rock Drive climbs from its lowest point along the Colorado River up onto the brilliantly eroded Uncompahgre Plateau, dipping into and out of Monument, Ute, Red and Columbus canyons and darting through dark tunnels along the way. To make it easy on Siobhan, we enlisted the effervescent Roxann of Grand Junction Tours to keep the car on the road, provide knowledgeable rock talk and take us to those secret hideaways only the locals can know. She picked us up at our hotel at 8:30 to avoid the 100+ temperatures of the afternoon and quickly delivered us to the park. We enjoyed colorful banter, learned a lot, took a zillion photos and came back alive so I guess Roxann did a good job even though we likely were not as much fun as the winery tourists. “That was great, now we need to find a rock shop,” said Siobhan. “I think there’s one over on 23 7/8 Road or Pi-R-Squared Street.” Oddly enough, there was.
A Horatio Alger Story
Sunday is a slow bunt to third in Grand Junction, even on Main Street, which somehow escaped the numbers siege. Only a few of the many restaurants and brewpubs were open, most of them packed, and we ended up in a rollicking Japanese place called Suehiro, where the customers are required to eat either with chopsticks or their hands---it’s a fork-free zone. Fortunately for Bill, who has little experience in Asian dining, the chopsticks were joined at the top and easier to operate than the challenging major league chopsticks at other places. We ate as much as we could, tossed half the enormous dinner in a large box and found a grizzled old hippie in a 50-year-old American flag shirt to give it to (fist bump, “thanks, Bro, I think I remember you from back in the day…”) and returned to our room to attend to one last job. We still had to get rid of the empty old suitcase.
Siobhan, who is fearful of breaking any law at any time, insisted it was against some unknown hotel code to merely leave it in the room, as I suggested. God knows it would not be the worst thing an unsuspecting maid has ever found on her morning tour of duty. Failing to convince her, I suggested wheeling it downstairs to the parking lot and placing it next to a very large hotel dumpster, perhaps to be discovered by a wandering gentleman of little means in need of weatherproof protection for his wardrobe. “Nobody will ever take that suitcase,” she insisted. “Wanna bet?” I replied. We will not discuss the nature of the wager since this is a family news organ and we don’t want to scare the children.
Next morning, the large silver bag was gone, as I expected. In spite of losing the bet, Siobhan was thrilled with the result, envisioning her discarded piece of property now in the hands of some prideful new owner, the envy of his ragged comrades after this sudden upscale from a meager shopping cart. Who knows what story he told, what adventure he concocted to amuse and delight his legion of followers? As for the sad bag, it was a different story, indeed. “Where once I dined with kings, now I sit with paupers,” it lamented, shedding a single tear before considering the silver lining which lights every dark cloud. “But then again, when I write my novel, this will be an exciting turnabout, a challenging twist of Fate requiring cleverness, perseverance and a grand sense of humor. It could even be Pulitzer-worthy, a riches-to-rags-to riches miracle. Gee, thanks Bill, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Eastward, Through The Fog!”
Huge enough to be overwhelming, intimate enough to feel the pulse of time, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park exposes visitors to some of the steepest cliffs, oldest rock and craggiest spires in North America. With two million years to “git ‘er done,” the Gunnison River and its faithful Indian companion Weathering have sculpted a vertical wilderness of rock, a deep gorge carved through Precambrian rock with views of dramatic drops and striated painted cliffs. The Black Canyon is a lofty seventh on the list of parks with the greatest amount of wildlife, which includes mule deer, elk and golden eagles, all of them quite comfortable with the distance the canyon puts between them and humans. If you’re lucky, you might even see a Peregrine falcon zipping by at 200 mph on its way to lunch.
The South Rim of the canyon has more facilities, overlooks and sterling views and is accessed by a paved road which winds seven colorful miles through the park. The North Rim, alas, is serviced by a gravel road with none of the typical niceties. There are numerous stops along the South Rim, most of which are 100 to 300 yards from the parking area to the overlook. An alternative is the Rim Rock Nature Trail, which follows a relatively flat path along the rim of the canyon. If your family has one or two more kids than you’d like or a particularly sullen teenage daughter, you might opt for the two-mile Flat Loop Trail, which is narrow and traverses steep slopes over dubious footing.
Disa & Data
1. The Gunnison River drops an average of 43 feet per mile through the canyon, which is six times more the the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. So there.
2. Colorado’s biggest cliff—and the third tallest in the country—is the Black Canyon’s Painted Wall, standing 2250 feet tall from river to rim. The Empire State Building stands at a meager 1250 feet, but has elevators.
3. Black Canyon gets its name from the fact that some parts of the gorge receive only 33 total minutes of sunlight per day, like New England.
4. BC is the least-visited national park in Colorado and one of the lesser visited parks overall because it is in the middle of nowhere and there’s no McDonald’s nearby.
5. Black Canyon is one of the best and least expensive places in the U.S. for cross-country skiing, rock climbing, hiking, backpacking and kayaking. Also, the kids don’t ask for $6 to buy cotton candy.
Don’t Cry For Me, Alamosa
In planning our Colorado trip, we went hotel reservationless two of the last three nights, not knowing how long we’d spend at the Black Canyon or how close we should get to Great Sand Dunes National Park, further east. Your park destination might be thrill-a-minute but when it’s over, noone wants to be stuck in a Lodi. Accommodations near the dunes appeared to be sparse or spartan or some dreary combination of both, so we headed for a lively looking town called Alamosa, 32 miles from the park. Last time anyone looked, there were 9806 hardy souls living there, it was still the county seat and home to bustling Adams State University and some nervy outlander was threatening to open a karaoke bar right in the middle of town. We got trouble…right here in River City. We’ll get back to you when we find a hotel.
That’s all, folks….
