Colorado - Day 17 - back east to Royal Gorge

Royal Gorge KOA, Cañon City                                                                Thursday, 17 September 2020

Late yesterday afternoon, Dexter noticed a fox trotting through our campsite.  He and I watched for quite a while as the fox seemed to be searching for food.  He was such a beautiful red, but he looked really thin to me, which I found surprising given all the rabbits we've been seeing at this park.  I'm sure the deer are too big for him to tackle, but surely not the rabbits.  We watched the dog at a nearby campsite nearly strangle himself on the long leash his people had put him on when he noticed the fox and tried to get at him.  We didn't see the fox after that.  It's not that I want any of the rabbits to die but I don't want the fox to die either, and there were a lot of rabbits and that fox sure looked hungry.

The brochure for the Crawford State Park said we could see several identified mountains from the park.  Based on the names they gave, I'm guessing that's what I got photos of near our campsite.

This must be Needle Rock.

And this must be
Saddle Mountain

I thought maybe this was 
Castle Rock . . .

. . . until I saw this one.

today's route

On the road                                                                                            If this route looks familiar, it's because I've already traveled most of it.  The only difference is that, from last night's campground, I first went north and west to Delta, picked up US 50 again and went south to Montrose, then east past the entrance to the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park and on over the Continental Divide again.  I went this route because I wanted to avoid driving on the non-mountain side of that side road I'd taken the other day when I first went up to Crawford State Park.  What I'd forgotten is that I'd still have a chance to be on the non-mountain side of a road, this time the road back east over the Continental Divide.

Meanwhile I was proving ignorance was bliss, because of not knowing I should be dreading this drive.  Instead, I was enjoying the mountains.  I really have missed seeing mountains when I was living in Texas.  I mean, look at this scenery.

To people 150 years ago, after crossing the plains and 
then the mountains, this land may have looked like Paradise. 

I find them very relaxing to look at because of seeming so permanent and solid.  (Yes, I know they're anything but settled in, but geological time doesn't worry me.)  I really don't think I could be happy living in this state - the effect of the altitude on my breathing, if for no other reason - but I'm very glad indeed to know we have such beautiful and productive places in this country.  That's farmland in the foreground of that photo; I was surprised at the extent to which CO is covered by farms.

At the town of Hotchkiss (after Crawford and before Delta), I saw a sign saying "Jesus 2020."  Maybe that's an election ticket folks could support.  Also in Hotchkiss I saw a seat outside a business, and I wish I'd been able to get a photo.  The bench was bright red metal and had a cow's head at one end.  I suppose it had a tail at the other end, though I didn't see it.  Very clever here in Beef Country.

Delta has beautiful flowers growing in the medians of downtown streets, many of them dahlias which is a flower I enjoyed in Washington and have missed since I moved to Texas.

The countryside in this area seemed prehistoric, with canyons cutting in between hills and mesas, which had been carved out of rock.  It didn't seem like anything would grow here, though I saw grassland and scrub.  And I guess the farms were where people had irrigated.  

I saw plenty of corn, which was still growing, though it seems a little late in the season.  But I saw online that the risk of spring frost in CO usually ends the 1st week in May, which is a lot later than southern states see.  Tomatoes were still ripening on the vines I saw.  I saw wheat being harvested all over the state.

Montrose, elev. 5,794', says it's Home of the Black Canyon.  In the town, I passed the Himalayan Pun Hill Kitchen.  (I don't know, but the name suggests a sense of humor.)  Also an establishment named Phelanies - A Speakeasy.  I found the Montrose downtown area charming.

Just east of town I saw a very tiny observatory.  It had no sign or name I could see, so I suppose someone built it for themselves, which sounds like an expensive hobby.

Once I'd turned east I ran into a headwind so strong at times I felt like we were having trouble making any headway along the road.  It seemed to be almost stopping us, though I know it wasn't.  The speed limit was 65 mph and I was having trouble reaching even 55. 

I saw a sign saying Cerro Summit 4 Miles, and the road started climbing steadily upward in a series of curves and s-curves while my ears popped.  I never saw a sign saying I'd reached the summit, but I learned online that it exists and is at 8,042' elevation.

I passed cows, sheep, grasslands, croplands.  At one point I saw 2 cows grazing outside their fence near the road, while 3 others were still inside the fence.  Sounds like the farmer needs to mend his fences (as the saying goes).

I saw a sign saying Blue Mesa Summit 4 Miles, and that drive was just like the one for Cerro Summit.  Again there wasn't a sign saying I'd made it to the top, but online it says this summit is at 7,769'.  So the road was going up and down and back up and back down for quite a long way.  When I started down from this particular summit, I saw a sign with a yellow flashing light that said I was starting a 3 mile stretch of descending s-curves.  Not a reassuring sign.

When I got to Blue Mesa Reservoir, I realized I'd seen it before and in fact had taken a picture of it.  The dam that forms this lake is the one I drove over on my way to Crawford State Park, the road that leads past Hermit's Rest.  The water is really blue and beautiful.  And by the way, this reservoir is Colorado's largest body of water.

I'd noticed before and saw again along this road that the chipmunks seemed to be playing Chicken with the cars.  It was almost as if they waited for a vehicle to come along and then, and only then, did they try to cross the road.

A big truck with a sign saying "Oversize Load" (and it really was oversize) came down the road toward me and, coming into a curve, ended up taking up half my lane.  I came to a stop as far over as I could and just hoped he could straighten up out of the curve in time to miss me.  He did, but it was a little breathtaking for a minute.

I started noticing that the amount of yellow on the trees up here seemed greater than the amount a week ago when I first came across.  Well, the first day of Autumn is next week.

We stopped in Gunnison to take a break before going over the pass.  I found a nice park there so the dogs could walk around.  We'd been driving for the best part of 3 hours by then and all needed the rest.

Monarch Pass

I've seen quite a few of those Cruise America RV rentals lately.  Maybe people wanting to get out of quarantining but not ready for their usual type of travel.  Did I mention before that the place where I got repair work done on my RV near Dallas told me sales of RVs and trailers was booming this year?  It's probably a side effect of the virus.

So anyway, I was driving toward Monarch Pass and had 2 of those Cruise America RVs come by me, one after another.  Both RVs were small - probably 25' - and I'm guessing the people were traveling together, which is a pretty good idea, really, and one way to cope with the virus.

In fact, I've been seeing so many RVs recently that it seems like summer is still here.  I still can't get used to the idea that every single campground in the places I've been going here in CO is packed.  Even in the middle of the week.  That's never happened even in the middle of the summer.  Probably another by-product of the virus.

I passed a sign saying Monarch Summit 7 Miles. That's the summit that's above 11,000' and it's a serious climb.  It was somewhere in here that I started getting near to panic because of my lane being the one next to the downhill side.  For someone with my fear of heights, it was a tough trip.  There's a building at the summit that's a base for various activities - mostly winter ones, like skiiing.  I stopped there to unclench my fingers from the steering wheel and take a break before heading downhill.

You can see from the leftover snow piles
that it hasn't really gotten warm up here.

From there, I set off on a 4,000' descent.  So I had all those curves and s-curves and no shoulder and I'm not even sure there was a guard rail on the edge of the road in some places and no place to pull off at all and the downhill was so incredibly steeply downhill and my peripheral vision kept catching glimpses of it as I went around the curves - it was all completely terrifying.  I put every ounce of focus I could into ignoring anything beyond the edge of the road, trying desperately to block out my peripheral vision, and went as slowly as I thought I needed to to keep from going crazy.  Maybe you could just say I have more faith in gravity and centrifugal force than the average person and this road scared me out of several years growth.

Very luckily, there wasn't much traffic behind me so I didn't have the added pressure of worrying about all the other folks I was holding up.  In one place I found a little area where I could move over a bit to let a motorcyclist by me - and he too waved to thank me, which was nice.

As we got a little lower I started to notice a lot of horses here and there.  Really pretty ones that looked well cared for.

I finally made it down to Poncha Springs, elev. 7,465', Crossroads of the Rockies.  It took me an hour and a half to drive the 60 miles or so from Gunnison, which is faster than it seemed at the time.

Then I was past Salida and came to that series of signs I'd seen on the way west:  "Truckers - Curves Tighten" and "Motorcycles Use Extreme Caution" and "Slow Down - Sharp Curves."

After Salida I crossed the Arkansas River and was now on the mountain side of the road, with a dramatic decrease in tension.  Going this direction gave me a different view of the scenery than I'd had when I'd gone west.  An example is this rock formation, which I'd completely missed the other day.

I hope you can see the obvious uplift of the rocks, making a perfect illustration of the forces of upheaval that once took place here to create these mountains.  (I can thoroughly appreciate them as long as I'm not driving on the edge of a precipice.)

I saw 4 horses by the roadside, that had obviously gotten out of their field because a guy was trying to herd them with his pickup and they were resisting.  This was a 2-lane road and traffic stopped in the other lane out of fear the horses would plunge across the road.  The guy finally got out of his truck and chased them on foot into their field.  Who knew that fences could be so important?  (Robert Frost notwithstanding.)

I passed a KOA that says it's the Loma Linda KOA, though in the KOA book it's called the Cotopaxi KOA.  Anyway, their sign out front says:

                                 OPEN

                        Kinda

Royal Gorge Bridge & Park

I'd managed to make it to tonight's campground by 2:20 and decided to go an extra 3 miles down the road to visit the Royal Gorge.  I'd intended to do it in the morning but decided to go ahead today - after all, I'd already been looking at gorges today, might as well see another one.

Here's what I learned.  The Royal Gorge Park is owned by the City of Cañon City and has been developed pretty thoroughly as a tourist attraction.  But the development didn't extend to a road that's particularly driveable, and it didn't include much of a parking lot for visitors.  The one for cars was fine, but the lot for overflow & RVs wasn't paved and was on a steep hill, which they expected us 2nd class citizens to walk up and down to get to the visitor center.  They seemed to be mostly wanting people to spend money on raft trips, rock climbing tours, zip lines across the gorge, and so forth.

The bridge itself was built in 1929 I think and, at 955' above the Arkansas River, was the world's highest until one in China beat it out in 2001.  It can be driven across and some people do it.

These are my photos of the bridge and, because I was tired and because I didn't want to hike up and down the hill from Parking Lot B, I didn't get any closer.  This photo (below) that I found on the internet probably gives a good view of what's there.

Nice little ditch, isn't it?

And then back to the KOA which was almost completely full, despite this being a Wednesday, and at least half the folks had dogs.  Very strange, but there it is.