Day 18 Black Canyon of the Gunnison

May 19, 2013

I am thankful we drove to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park during the daylight. It was a really beautiful drive and there were steep ledges without any guardrails. There is a huge reservoir as a result of several dams and lots of folks were out fishing and its only 38 degrees. Yikes! Who decided to come to the Rockies in May?

The Black Canyon is impressive. Steep, jagged rock faces formed about 1 cm per year for about 2 million years as the Gunnison River rushed through, causing erosion and wah-lah! The canyon walls are the steepest in Colorado and highest at Warner Point at 2,772 feet (more than twice the height of the empire state building)!

Just us being silly. That would be a LONG fall!

This viewing area is called the Painted Wall, for good reason, apparently it was formed when lava filled the crevasses and cooled, resulted in colored 'veins' in the canyon surface.

Not sure if the wildflowers were planted or if mother nature thought it’d be a great place for a garden, either way, it was so pretty!

Yup, that is hail or at least miniature little snowballs that just fell. We have had all sorts of weather here, sun, rain, hail, snowballs. Mother nature is not willing to make up her mind today. We decide to have a little lunch and read while it passes.

We drove down to the East Portal at the bottom of the gorge. It is pretty, although with the river dammed, it is not quite a spectacular as we would imagined a raging white water river. There were several men fishing and some really nice views. Ryan saw some Canadian Geese swimming rapids :)

Total Miles: 97
Gas: no fill ups today
Thoughts: It can’t be sunny and warm everyday. Brrr!