A Little Relief. . . from the Long Hot Summer

It's been SO HOT! I know, I know. That's what I get for living in Texas. Any number of things had me chompin' at the bit to get out of town for more than a couple of days. In the end, I was only gone for three, but it was an interesting three. Colorado was my destination. I needed the cool of more elevation, and I wanted to compare a Smoky Mountain Autumn and a Rocky Mountain one.

Day 1: An hour or so out of Austin I ran over a plastic bag in the dark that turned out to be a deer antler. The noise it made was epic, and I wondered for a while whether an antler could puncture a tire. It didn't take long to show me it can, and did. I managed to make it to the next medium-sized town and dawdled over a convenience store breakfast while the town woke up and readied itself for business. When it was ready, I had the tire repaired and it has held up admirably all the way through my Rocky Mountain adventure and return home. I spent the night in Colorado Springs after 15 hours on the road rather than the planned 13. I was so pleased the tire repair held up, 15 hours was fine.

Day 2: I timed my departure to put Colorado Springs behind me before sunrise and it worked out well. I was out in the sticks, headed NW to get an impression of Breckenridge, about 80 miles from said Springs as the crow flies. These first two pictures were taken about 2/3 of the way there.  As expected of a resort town, it's pretty - but way too crowded by my lights. I joined I-70 W to save travel time. My plan was to visit both the north and south rims of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. I normally eschew the Interstates if I can, but this whirlwind visit to the Rockies required the concession to expedience.

I would be remiss, however, if I failed to comment on the big surprise of day 2. The reason I try to avoid the Interstates is that they're typically much less interesting than US highways, and state & county roads. But the section of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon beats anything I'd ever seen with respect to roadways. The canyon is so narrow that the designer/builders used much of its floor space for the two eastbound lanes, alongside the Colorado River and cantilevered the westbound lanes from the north face of the canyon walls. Imagine the canyon having been terraced, with the east and westbound lanes on different levels running in opposite directions. And, I found out this evening that there's also a bike lane below the eastbound lanes and between them and the river. It's a gorgeous canyon and a magnificent civil engineering effort to accommodate the Interstate Highway System.

Able to leave the Interstate at Glenwood Springs I headed for the north rim of the Black Canyon, about 85 miles. Believe me, I had no problem wandering south on the state highway. It was exactly what I wanted to see. I missed the vivid reds and oranges of the Smoky Mountain autumn, but Colorado does an especially fine job with its Rocky Mountain golds. The Aspens and Douglas Firs are marvelous.

Finally, the north rim of the Black Canyon! There are several overlooks here and, while they might be a bit less elaborate than the typical overlooks you might find on the south rim or at Bryce Canyon for example, the views directly down to the river make it well worth the extra effort it took to get here.

This is the same view as above, taking advantage of the Canon's zoom lens. What do you think?

This is the view looking upstream at the Gunnison River so I don't know how deep the canyon is there. The only reference I could find about the canyon depth was 2250 ft deep at the Painted Wall, a mile and a quarter downstream. If I read the Google topographical map correctly, I got about 1520 ft deep at the Balanced Rock View (the two previous pics looking straight down). The topos also note that the north rim is about 80 ft lower than the south rim.

I found these two shots particularly interesting for the small footprint the Douglas Firs managed to establish on the canted shelf in the picture above, and the lone Aspen clinging to its even smaller sunny spot in the picture below.

This shot is looking upstream again and to me it emphasizes just how rugged this area actually is. In the distance, the canyon is a fair bit wider and a lot more fir trees share the extra sunlight. It also shows the precarious existence of the trees here with so little soil available to nurture them.

I hope to have another post ready to go tomorrow with shots taken on the drive to the south rim of the canyon and shots from the south rim overlooks.