Day 7: June 19, 2011

Driving out of Colorado Springs

11:03 am

74 Degrees F

Writing on June 21, 2011

Let’s see—Day 7 was not that eventful, but it sure was beautiful. From the Timber Ridge Lodge, we trekked just a short hour out to The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park: another incredible sight that we’d never even heard of before. The Black Canyon is so named because of the sheer and narrow, 2,000 foot drop into the canyon. The rock formations were completely different from anything we’d seen yet—they are jagged, black and gray crags of solid stone. Bryce’s Hoodoos looked somehow…soft, while these felt dark and foreboding. The Grand Canyon is 10 miles across at some point, whereas the Black Canyon is often only hundreds of yards across.

We took a beautiful 2-mile hike at the very top of one of the overlooks. We had a nice conversation with a chipmunk and saw some awesome views. We picked juniper berries and watched out for “The Problem Bear” that stalks the mountain.

Behold, the Great Pomeranian of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison!

Again, there was not a ton of variety to the afternoon, but the evening made up for it. We drove to Curecanti National Recreation Area; inside the park is a reservoir called Blue Mesa that was created by a dam at the Gunnison River. Despite the fact that it was man-formed, the lake was gorgeous—it’s the largest body of water in Colorado. This was another one of our trail-blazing, off the route vacation stops. It was a good place to camp for the night and cut some of our time to Colorado Springs in the morning.

Driving around the campsites near the lake, we discovered we were in for another windy night. Little did we know that the lake is known for windsurfing—we debated even trying to camp near the water, but it really was another beautiful location. It kind of reminded me of the windy north shore of Oahu. We picked a spot and headed into Gunnison for dinner.

Gunnison is aptly named—every other store is a hunting outfitter, tackle or gun shop. Oddly enough, Gunnison is also apparently an up and coming artsy community. We really didn’t see any evidence of that with the exception of our awesome restaurant. Teddy discovered “The Twisted Fork” on “Main Street”—we had stumbled upon a serious East Village hip Asian Fusion joint. They offered a wide variety of clever cocktails and to-die-for entrees—I got Pho (shout out Michael Duke) and Teddy got Elk Risotto (shout out…lovers of strange meats). I also slurped up a melon cooler made with little chunks of cantaloupe. Poor Teddy can’t drink for another 4 weeks—doctor’s orders after our crash and Teddy’s subsequent amnesic concussion. Plus, he hates stuff with fruit chunks in it, so the melon cooler was all mine! ☺ Good thing the bartender made my drink at half strength—I already felt drunk on the altitude. The bartender and waitress were hilarious and really friendly.

Leaving Gunnison, we got a little concerned with the “scattered showers” brewing near the lake. There was a faint but lovely rainbow right above our heads and a few drizzles on our windshield, but from what we could see on the highway, our campsite was in for it. When we got to the site, the wind had died to almost a stop, but the black clouds in the distance promised a turbulent night—or a turbulent next five minutes. We had to get the tent up.

We got all geared up in the car to face the drizzle and impending storm. We decided to go all “Amazing Race” with pitching the tent. My former, very non-outdoorsy self would be extremely impressed that Teddy and I got the thing up in 4 minutes flat! It was kind of exhilarating racing back and forth from the car in the freezing drizzle to get our bed together for the night. We got in the tent and waited for the downpour. After about twenty minutes, we realized that the whole reason we had rushed—the massive rainstorm—had completely circled our campground and left us practically dry. Whatever. It was still so fun.

We took a walk down to the beach, careful not to touch the water—it’s apparently so cold that if you stay in for more than a few minutes, hypothermia sets in. I was already getting a little chilly—I was not expecting high 40s, low 50s on this camping trip at ALL. We wrapped towels around each other to keep warm outside. Because of the chill and the drizzle, we decided to “stay in” for the evening and not leave the tent. We read out of this book we picked up at Zion—it’s called Ranger Confidential and it’s actually really well written and so entertaining. It’s kind of like the Cops of the National Parks. There are crazies, drug addicts, and people that attempt to recreate the Thelma and Louise car-off-the-canyon suicide. There are also stories of scorpions, bears and love affairs. We did not expect it to be such an emotional read—I was a total wreck after reading about a plane crash that we decided to stop reading and go to sleep.

In the middle of the night, I woke up because of the roar of our tent battling torrential rain and wind outside. I thought we had escaped the storm! We were afraid because if there was any indication of lightning, we would have to sleep in the car; tents are not safe lightning hideouts. We were both awake, wondering how our little tent could survive the night, but we had staked it into the ground pretty securely. In reality, it was a lot of fun; we were completely protected by the tent—warm and dry and giggling at our most rugged of adventures yet. I was also getting “tent fever”, as I called it. We had been in the tent since 6 pm and I needed to get out!

By the time we woke up in the morning, however, there was nothing Teddy could do pull me outside. The fly covering the outside of our tent was soaked with rain. If you moved an inch, or tried to sit up, the icy water would drip down on you. When I finally did exit our warm hovel, I was practically bowled over by the 34 DEGREE TEMPERATURE outside! That, compounded with a whipping 10 mile an hour wind kicking up freezing lake water into our faces was the WORST. Somehow, we made it out of there, soaked to the bone and grateful for the heat of the Matrix.