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.

Day 6: June 18, 2011

At the top of the Black Canyon at the Gunnison National Park

2:38 pm

64 degrees F

Written on Sunday June 19, 2011

So let’s see: on Friday night we stuck to our promise and camped at a K.O.A. in Durango, CO. We didn’t see much of the town that night, but it was kinda fun to get a K.O.A. experience, which is basically “comfortably unrugged” as Teddy put it. They escorted us to our campsite, there was a sawdust bed for our tent, we ordered pizza and they brought it to our site. We arrived too late to use the pool and woke up too late to get the pancake breakfast, but those are there, too. It was like family summer camp or something. It’s quite different from risky camping—we’ve come to realize that there is a difference.

We have been a little bit ahead of slash off of our itinerary, so we had to do a bit of research on how to spend the next two days before meeting my cousin Adrienne in Colorado Springs. Aunt Nin got me this book called One Thousand Things to See Before You Die: America and Canada. I have actually taken most of my trip ideas from this great book—there are places I’ve never heard of including Durango, Silverton and Ouray, Colorado.

Each of these towns has a population under 1,000—their industry is mostly based on tourism. They are picturesque Old West mining towns nestled in the foothills of some incredibly beautiful mountains in the San Juan mountain range. I’ll tell you more about Silverton in a minute, but first I want to write about one of the most unexpected and gorgeous things we’ve seen yet: Molas Pass on the 550 toward Silverton. We went from brutal 105 degree heat in the desert to a chilly and windy 50 something degrees. We were so high up too—at 10,910 feet. There’s snow all over the mountains and we can’t believe that only yesterday we were wiping desert dust out of our ears. It really looks like the Alps.

Durango is more modern than Silverton or Ouray, and we only really drove through it. We stopped for a second at Honeyville to get some fresh, wildflower honey and planned to have lunch in Silverton. I saw a postcard for this awesome looking restaurant called “Handlebars”. It was the ideal “Saloon” from the Old West. Tons of ridiculous taxidermy creatures hung all over the walls. They served beer in jars and served real maple syrup sarsaparilla. Some fun pictures below. I got over my fear of odd meat, once again, to try the Buffalo Burger…so delicious! It was awkward that a stuffed Bison was watching me from right above our table…

After lunch, we walked all through town on our first relatively relaxing day of the trip. We found old-timey shops with old-timey tools. We, especially Teddy, love old-timey stuff, so a trip through the Silverton town and mining museum/historical society was really cool. Check out the pictures of us in the jail (holding a ball and chain ::har har::), Teddy playing an old-timey piano with his best “old-timey face”, and a cool film projecter.

We also found a lovely town mascot named Zeke—he’s a bull terrier and was fat like a pig. We took a couple of pictures especially for Teddy’s nephew, Ryan, of the real-life coal-and-steam-run train. “Happy Birthday, Choo Choo!”

We found out we had arrived in Silverton for the one-night-only “Taste of Silverton” event—all the restaurants set out little stands in the middle of town where you could buy food for a ticket ($1 each). There were people dressed in Victorian dresses and guys in full old cowboy gear. On some level, we really didn’t even know if these guys were dressed up or if they really just wore that stuff every day. It was pretty cute. They were having a low-key staged gunfight at the end of town—less exciting than it sounds. We met some really nice people all throughout the town and they were ALL there at the food fair. At that moment, we realized just how small the town was—it was a little Twilight Zone-y.

After dinner, we drove a perilous but spectacular road called “The Million Dollar Highway”—apparently it cost a million to build. Now, it just “looks like a million bucks”. It is the most dangerous road in Colorado—hairpin turns and no guard-rails whatsoever. Mountains are carved out to make tunnels, there is constant fear of rock-fall, and below you is a sheer drop to a rushing (and I mean, really rushing) river. I was pretty white-knuckled the whole time, but it was so, so beautiful. Snow-capped mountains reached high above the lush, green forest and there were waterfalls streaming down the massive cliff faces.

We tried and failed to find a campground in the forest—at one point, we found a site only accessible by 4-wheel drive. We thought we’d take a whack at it and ended up terrified of the 45-degree angle climb up rocky ditches. We figured it might be possible to bring our items above this treacherous hill to camp, but it was too far and there were a few weirdos up there. Remote + weirdos= not good. But, a Great Dane raced up to me and wanted to play fetch, so I thought the climb was worth it. Also—best sighting ever—a yellow-bellied marmot. It’s basically a lazy beaver/groundhog who is fat. Hilarious.

Now in Ouray, “The Switzerland of America” (dubbed so because of the mountains described above), we tried to find lodging for the evening. We had been so good about planning our sleeping spots, but now, off our route, we were kind of at a loss. Finally, we gave up on camping for the night and decided to try out “The Timber Ridge Lodge”—a side of the road motel. Ouray thrives on tourists and really jacks up the prices on hotels/motels, so this 1 star was a bit more than we wanted to spend—but with free wifi, really nice staff and a general sense of cleanliness, we felt pretty comfortable. Also, the Lodge was a hop, skip, and a jump from the Ouray Hot Springs! We jumped in our swimsuits and took a 15 minute hike to the hot springs—an Olympic sized, 3 foot deep, pool with different zones of about 70, 80 and 100 degrees respectively. The pools left something to be desired in terms of a “natural” environment—it was more or less a public pool. But, it was so relaxing and wonderful to soak in my first ever hot spring.