Pic of the Day

Looking downstream into the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, near Montrose, Co. View one from the rim and view two from the river. 

Pic of the Day

Had a great day in the mountains today. Went for a hike at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. This is a view of the Florissant Valley from one of the trails. 

Pic of the Day

Okay, so technically, these are two pictures, not one, because I just couldn't decide. They are both from Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs. 

Four States at Once!

When I was in sixth grade, my English teacher Mrs. Mann told us about a trip she had taken to the southwest, and about this neat place where four states touched. Ever since then, I've been slightly obsessed with going to that spot for myself. After doing some research on the site, located on Navajo tribal land, I had to adjust my expectations, because many reviews weren't that nice.

Yes, it seemed tourist trap-y, but it also was providing much-needed support to the local economy. So I paid my three dollars and parked.

Here's what it looks like:

And here's me, standing in all four states at once. (After I got home, a saw a snap on Flickr of a girl who sat criss-cross applesauce in four states at once...so, yup, one day I'm going to have to go back and do that).

I had many other fun Southwest adventures on this day, but the Four Corners needed its own spotlight.

Cliff Dwellers

Mesa Verde National Park was not at all what I expected it to be.  For starters, despite it's name translating as "green table," I really didn't expect it to be so green.

 

I also didn't really expect it to be so interesting in terms of archaeology. I figured it would be cool to look at a few cliff-dwelling ruins. But instead I found an entire mesa-top's worth of excavated dwellings from different times in the ancestral Puebloans' history.

I was too chicken to climb down the ladders into any of these cliff-side ruins, but the park movie that talked about it helped me visualize. There's also a really fascinating museum up on the mesa with tons of artifacts.

The best part, though, was the campground. Mesa Verde has one of the darkest night skies in the country, and I have never seen anything so amazing. I could see millions of stars. I must have laid out watching them for hours. I want to go back just for that!

The Light at the End of the Scary Road (Glenwood Canyon)

The Colorado River begins like most rivers, a trickle high up on a mountain pass, in this case La Poudre Pass in the Front Range of the Rockies. It descends some 10,000 feet as it races down the Colorado Plateau, seeking, as all good rivers do, the path of least resistance to sea level. (Too bad it doesn't actually reach the sea anymore, but that's a topic for a different post).

The Colorado River in its infancy, a mild-mannered little stream

It is possible to leave the western entrance of Rocky Mountain National Park and follow the course of the Colorado River all the way to Moab, Utah, just west of where the Colorado converges with the Green River on its journey towards the famed Grand Canyon. (Unless you're me, of course, and you get a little off-course for a while. But eventually you're forced back to the river to head west out of the Rockies and into the high, dry inter-mountain region.) 


But to do that, you have to go through the canyons cut by the river, with the river. Suspended over it, in fact, through Glenwood Canyon (click the link for pics, because I was too scared to stop and take any). There are over 40 bridges and tunnels and other crazy feats of engineering that make is possible for humans to drive this route, but if you're not expecting it (which of course I wasn't), I-70 in western Colorado can be a scary thing. At one point, you can clearly see that you're going west, somewhere below you are the eastbound lanes, and below that is the train, everything cantilevered above above the surface of the river. 


If I were in charge, I would have just gone around the mountains a different way. It was the creepiest feeling ever to be at the bottom of this towering canyon (which may not have been all that towering, but was definitely the deepest canyon I've ever been at the bottom of) with the river, which at least seemed raging, right there. No recourse if there was an emergency situation-earthquake, fire, random wildlife herd stampeding across the road-unless you were prepared to climb straight up the mountain. 


But like many situations in life, once you've passed through them and survived, you start to think to yourself, Hey, maybe I could do that again. And this time, since I know I won't be swallowed whole by towering canyon walls, chewed up and spit back out into the mighty river, maybe I could stop along the way and enjoy the scenery. Because for all its scariness, Glenwood Canyon is also spectacular, especially to a sea-level-dweller like me. 


The best part of all is that after you leave Glenwood and squeeze through De Beque  Canyon, you head out onto a flat plateau with mountains rising in the distance all around you, the river now your cherished friend. Driving west through this country at the sunset golden hour was breath-taking.

Heading towards the mesas of Arches & Canyonlands country, just off of I-70

Until I realized that I'd better hurry the heck up and get to civilization-which in these parts is limited to Moab, Utah-before scary, nocturnal desert things started crawling around the road. But that's a story for tomorrow...

Rocky Mountain National Park (or An Ode to Mountains)

I love mountains. When I was a kid, I thought I lived near some nice mountains. Then I went to Europe in college and stayed at a hotel on the summit of Mt. Pilatus in the Swiss Alps. Those were Mountains compared to what I had grown up with. But it wasn't until I drove through the Big Horn Mountains on my first cross-country trip that I really found out what mountains were. And now I am addicted to them. So Rocky Mountain National Park was a much-anticipated stop, which did not disappoint.

See? Mountains everywhere you look. It's like God took two-thirds of Colorado and crumpled it up like a piece of copy paper and then tried to smooth it back out again, only you can't really smooth paper back out; thus, the many ranges and peaks of the Colorado Rockies were formed.

Mountains so tall that nothing grows on top of them. Mountains that are, well, rocky.

And mountains that are covered with snow. Even in July.

Bear Lake was probably my favorite place in the park. I went later in the day, finishing up my short hike around the lake just before sunset, so it wasn't too crowded. The altitude kicked my butt a little, even though I had just slept at 8,000 feet in Yellowstone a few days before. I just love how the blues were so blue and the greens were so green, especially against the stark gray of the mountains. And how the mountains stand so proudly and resolutely above the rest of the world, like sentinels watching over humanity and nature.

RMNP also has some cool wildlife. Here's a Stellar's jay, which is so brilliantly blue and beautiful.

I also saw a TON of elk. At the top of Trail Ridge Road, which runs over the mountains at a top elevation of around 12,000 feet, I saw about ten bull elk grazing in a field.

This guy was my favorite, even though he wouldn't pick his head up for me.

Up at the Alpine Visitor Center on Trail Ridge Road, a huge herd of mamas and babies congregated.

On the other side of the mountains, I saw several moose grazing along the banks of the teeny, tiny Colorado River, more like a stream at this early stage of its journey.

Another thing I was really looking forward to was seeing tons of wildflowers. I didn't see tons, but the ones I did encounter embodied everything I love about wildflowers; they were sweet, colorful, delicate yet hardy, bringing a mini-party to the harsh mountaintop.

I definitely plan to return to RMNP one day, hopefully earlier in the season so I can see even more flowers. And one day I'd like to come in the fall to hear the elk bugling. It's really a beautiful place.

Pics of the Day: July 20-22

July 20- Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. This formation is part of the Fiery Furnace.

July 21-This is Cliff Palace, one of the largest cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern Colorado. Ancestral Puebloans (also called Anasazi) lived here from about 1200-1300 AD.

July 22- The first picture is from Newspaper Rock at Petrified Forest National Park. These are petroglyphs left by the ancient Puebloans of the Puerco Pueblo. It is so amazing that they survive in such detail after all this time. The second shot of my foot may not look like much, but it's actually me standing in Colorado, Arizona, Utah & New Mexico all at the same time, at the Four Corners Monument  on the Navajo Nation lands.

Rocky Mountain High

We finally arrived in Colorado Springs after unexpected stops in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. It was getting towards dusk by the time we got to Garden of the Gods, and so we didn't have that much time to explore or take pictures.

The rock formations at Garden of the Gods are pretty interesting. I hope to be able to go back one day.

This one below is called Balancing Rock. It's huge and it sort of boggles the mind as to how it doesn't just fall over.

This is probably my favorite shot from GoG, although it's definitely not the best. I'm so glad I got a tripod to take with me this summer!

Here's our cute little cabin that we rented. We knew we would be pulling an all-nighter to drive across Kansas, so we wanted to make sure we had a good night's sleep in our cozy, air-conditioned cabin.

The next morning we got up kinda early and headed up Pike's Peak. After the Salmon Glacier road, I figured it couldn't be that scary.

But it totally was. No guard rails for most of the way makes for some tense turns. But the view at the top is totally worth it.

Even if, like me, you end up feeling incredibly ill from the altitude.

Katherine Lee Bates was inspired to write "American the Beautiful" from the top of Pike's Peak, and it's easy to see why.

As amazing as it was, I was relieved to return to Manitou Springs, situated at the more modest height of 7,000 feet. Some incredibly crazy people were running a marathon....up and down the mountain!!!

Once you leave the Front Range near Colorado Springs, Colorado gets really flat, really quickly. And flat is pretty much all you see until you hit the Appalachian Mountains.

Pike's Peak

Well, we made it. The view was so worth it. I almost threw up & passed out from the altitude, but it was still worth it. We are finishing lunch in Manitou Springs and then heading out. When I get home, I'll post agains to let you know I've arrived safely.