CO Road-trip 2012: Day 3

In the morning, we drove back to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park near dawn to get some pics from Sunset View, Cross-Fissures, and Painted Wall viewpoints. The canyon is a pretty spectacular place and because it was late in the season we basically had it to ourselves. The view of The Dragon on the Painted Wall from the Painted Wall viewpoint sticks out in my mind. Black Canyon is a relatively young national park (since 1999) but the area has been a national monument since 1976. Other canyons in the US are deeper but no others combine depth, narrowness, and sheer walls to the extent that the Black Canyon does. Black Canyon is 2,722' deep and is 1,100' wide at its narrowest and only 40' wide at river level. Standing on the edge of the canyon at one of the many viewpoints on the South Rim gives you a better appreciation for this scale. The Gunnison River began to form the canyon millions of years ago when the Rockies and the Colorado Plateau began to rise. In the beginning, the river quickly cut through more erodible material before it became entrenched and reached much harder Precambrian rocks. Since then, the river has been cutting through the rock much more slowly (about 1 inch every 100 years). This harder rock is what primarily makes up the canyon walls. Looking upon the depth of the canyon gives you a better sense of the geologic timescale that the river has been working over.We went back to the hotel after this, ate breakfast, and checked out. We followed US-550 south towards Ridgway along the Uncompahgre River. Immediately south of the Ridgway Reservoir we started to get fantastic views of the Uncompahgre Mountains to the southwest. We pulled over a couple of times to appreciate the scenery. At Ridgway, we hooked up with CO-62 and followed it west out of town. Next, we turned onto County Road 7 and headed south. Along the way we stopped at many viewpoints to look at the great fall colors (primarily aspens) and gorgeous mountains (including 14,158' Mt Sneffels). The views just kept getting better as we continued to drive and we couldn't have had better timing for the fall colors. The peak for fall colors all across Colorado usually falls near October 1 and only varies by a couple of weeks from year to year.For most of the drive, the road parallels East Fork Dallas Creek and towards the end of the road are some truly fantastic views looking over meadows surrounding the creek. Just before the end of the road and just west of the confluence of East Fork Dallas Creek and Wilson Creek is a particularly beautiful view of the mountains rising over a pretty meadow with a rustic wooden fence (left). We found a photographer here from California and chatted with him for a little while, took some pics, and let Penny wander a bit. Eventually we dragged ourselves back into the car to check out another County Road.We drove back down to CO-62 and headed towards Ridgway. However, on the western edge of town we turned onto County Road 5 and headed south again. We figured that this would be a disappointment after the fabulous views from County Road 7, but we were very pleasantly surprised to find the views from near the top of County Road 5 to be even better. We stopped at more viewpoints near the top of this road and picked out one particular spot to be the site of our future dream home. The view included a wide sweep of the surrounding snowy mountain peaks, bright golden aspens and deep green conifers reaching as far as they could up the slopes of the mountains, and a beautiful open meadow where some very lucky cows grazed- it was a bit of and ego check to realize we were jealous of cows. We climbed on top of our car to lounge and hung out at this spot and thought about how lucky we were to be in a place like this. Peaks in this area include Whitehouse Mountain, Mt Ridgway, Teakettle Mountain, and Mt Sneffels to the southeast and south and even more peaks to the west.After a while we reluctantly got back into the car and headed up the rest of the road. Just before reaching the end of the road we were treated to yet another fabulous view above Coal Creek. After walking around and enjoying the aspen groves, we drove back down into Ridgway and spent a little bit of time relaxing at a coffee shop/bookstore. Next, we drove just a little ways south of town on US-550 and pulled over on a ranch road to take in the views to the south. This area is incredibly beautiful and we definitely wouldn't mind making it our home if we could.We next headed back north on US-550 through Montrose and then east on US-50 towards Gunnison. We stopped a couple of times at the Blue Mesa Reservoir and took a few pics of the Dillon Pinnacles. Continuing east, we arrived in Gunnison, checked into our hotel, and relaxed for the rest of the night. Understandably we took a lot of pictures on this day. The scenery was unbelievable. We will definitely do our best to return to the area as soon as we can. For the day, we drove a total of 204 miles.