Deep, Steep, and Narrow
After spending four great days exploring Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes, we heading out south along the Peak to Peak Highway. This is a fantastic scenic route, and certainly tested our truck towing our 5th wheel along the twists and turns, ups and downs of Colorado's oldest scenic byway.
After spending four great days exploring Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes, we heading out south along the Peak to Peak Highway. This is a fantastic scenic route, and certainly tested our truck towing our 5th wheel along the twists and turns, ups and downs of Colorado's oldest scenic byway.
We merged on to I70 heading west at Central City, CO. But the Labor Day weekend traffic heading east into Denver was bumper to bumper all the way to Silverthorn, which is about 45 miles of traffic. We were pretty happy we were going the other way.
We made our way through the Eisenhower Tunnel, past the Silverthorne area, seeing the familiar exits to Copper Mountain, Vail, Beaver Creek and Aspen and along the way. The drive through Glenwood Canyon is always stunning. After exiting I70 onto 60 south to Montrose, we checked in at our next RV park, Riverbend RV Park, a quaint RV park south of town.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison ranks 58/63 for National Park visitation. When we were in the Visitor Center the park ranger mentioned that they saw a 78% increase in visitors year over year for August. It's also one of the smaller parks in size, at only 31,000 acres (by comparison, Yellowstone is 2.2M acres). Below are a ton of photos, but we all know most of the expanse just cannot be captured. It's hard to even fathom in person. The visitor center and most trails are on the south side, where you can get glimpses of the Gunnison river below.
We also drove to the north side of the park, which is about 90 minutes from Montrose, with the last 5 miles a dirt road. A perfect example of 'you can't get there from here'. Here we encountered a total of about 15 people, a swarm of bees, and more spectacular sights.
During our stay we also took a day trip to Ourey, known as the 'Little Switzerland of America' for its skiing and natural beauty. This tiny town of only 898 in southwestern Colorado is also a hub for back country skiing. We wanted to stop in at Ouray Brewing, however it was closed for the day due to staffing issues. We ended up finding Mr. Grumpy Pants Brewing serving taps out a side door. It was hard to wrap my head around the fact that we would be on the other side of these San Juan mountains in about a week, when we would visit Cortez, CO.
Overall we enjoyed the Montrose area including stopping in at Horsefly Brewing Company, Pomona Brewing Company and Silver Basin Brewing. The RV park even had a Labor Day picnic where we met a nice couple from Salt Lake City, UT, staying in the park while their new home was being built nearby. They had already been there over four months and were planning to move into their house by the end of the fall. I hope they made it! On to Utah and the Moab area next!Have you been to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park? Leave your comments below! Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us.
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