Colorado

Monday:  165 miles.  Elevation tonight 5750 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.

Today’s adventure began just 15 miles from our hotel… that’s why we stayed in Montrose last night.  We were headed to visit another National Park – one that neither of us had heard of before planning this trip.  Black Canyon of the Gunnison is a deep canyon in which the Gunnison River flows.  The canyon is so narrow and so deep—spanning, just 40 feet at its narrowest point, and reaching a greatest depth of 2,722 feet, that some parts of the canyon see only a few minutes of direct sunlight per day.

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Sunday:  195 miles.  Elevation tonight: 5800’ at Montrose, Colorado.  Highest elevation today: 10,550 !!!

Today’s adventure was to go see something that Colorado is famous for:  A world class ski resort.  We are not skiers.  We are not snow and cold kind of people.  But I thought seeing one of the ski resorts on this trip would be fun.  So I looked at Aspen, Vail, Breckenridge, Telluride…. and found that the gondola at Telluride is free!  OK – that made it to my list of places to go see.  So that was our itinerary today.  We would travel south about 130 miles to Telluride to spend the day, then back track about 65 miles to stay in Montrose so we’ll be in position for tomorrow’s adventure.

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Saturday:  135 miles.  Elevation tonight:  4600’ in Grand Junction, Colorado.

We didn’t get up early.  We were the second to the last car to leave the hotel this morning, around 9:30.  We found the Starbuck’s in the grocery store, and got ourselves a quick latte and breakfast sandwich. Good to go.  We were headed to Colorado today.  It was the joke when we left the triplet grandbabies in Spokane, that when we got to Colorado, we might just turn around and go back to be with them.  We’ll see!  We do miss those sweet little pirates!

As we headed out of Moab, we chose to take Highway 12 which follows the Colorado River.  We’ve been on this route before, and it is beautiful.

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