Chapter 7: If There's A Bright Center To The Universe, You're On The Planet That It's Farthest From.
I had originally wanted to spend the next 3 nights in Moab, Utah. Moab is a great base of operations for visiting Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, and would provide a nice place to stop, rest and break up the long drives.
Unfortunately, Moab knows that it’s a great base of operations, knows that most tourists will arrive in the summer months, and knows that there’s not much else in the area to provide competition. So its hotels are priced accordingly. It was very, very difficult to find any rooms that were both located in a clean, safe-looking hotel and also priced less than $150/night. Additionally, I had hoped to find a hotel in Moab with a nice-looking swimming pool, since I knew we would be doing a good deal of hiking in the desert in summer heat. That limited my options.
In the end, we found a good compromise. We splurged on a nice place in Moab, but only for 2 nights. We decided to spend one night in Grand Junction, Colorado, about two hours away from Moab and featuring much cheaper hotels. This seemed like a worthy solution addressing both our desires and budget.
But it meant we had one more day in Colorado, and we needed to find something to do to fill the time.
We made the decision to visit one of the lesser-known federally protected areas:
Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. Black Canyon is located in Nowhere, Colorado. Right in the middle of it, actually. The nearest town is Montrose, which isn’t really close to anything either.
Now for the really annoying part: in order to get there, we’d have to drive all the way to Grand Junction, Colorado—our home for the night, in case you’ve already forgotten everything I told you three paragraphs ago.
Then we would have to turn southeast and drive 90 minutes southeast through Montrose to the park. After our visit, we’d have to completely retrace our steps to get back to Grand Junction.
It was irritating, but unavoidable. If you want to see the sights, you have to make the effort to get there.
We left early (good riddance, Best Western of Eagle) and drove west on I-70. I-70 is one of the best interstate drives in the country. Driving west through the Rockies from Denver is spectacular enough, but then west of Eagle you reach
Glenwood Canyon. This is a canyon formed by the Colorado River in the western Rockies, and the highway was built to follow the river. We only have one crappy photo that doesn’t really do it justice. The engineers worked hard to try to preserve the scenery and natural character of the canyon, so they separated the eastbound and westbound lanes of the highway into two separate tiers, built into the side of the canyon. The westbound lanes are cantilevered over the eastbound lanes, reducing the overall footprint of the interstate and allowing for some great views of the river and canyon walls. After it was constructed, this stretch of highway won several awards that you’ve never heard of, because nobody pays attention to highway engineers unless they screw up. I might have mentioned that once or twice before.
It took about 2 hours to reach Grand Junction, and after a pit stop we turned southeast and drove through the Nothing. Thankfully, we survived and emerged unscathed 90 minutes later at:
The park is fairly small. It first was designated as a National Monument in 1933 and then received a promotion to National Park status in 1999, which is roughly about the last time I received a promotion as well. The distinguishing feature of this canyon is its extremely steep, narrow granite walls lining the Gunnison River below. Where the Grand Canyon is exposed sandstone, weathered and gradually eroded and exposed over a massive area by the gently-flowing Colorado River, Black Canyon’s channel erosion is much more narrow and violent, due to the hard-charging Gunnison River which drops an average of 34 feet/mile through the length of the canyon.
We reached our first overlook at the visitor center:
If you recall from our visit to the Grand Canyon, I was struck there by the eerie silence over such a vast space. There is no such silence here. Even over 2,000 feet above the canyon floor, you’re constantly aware of the roaring river below.
At its narrowest point, the canyon is only about 40 feet wide at the bottom, which was roughly the width of the visitor center building.
We did our usual National Park activities: pick up Junior Ranger workbooks for the kids, wander the exhibits, pretend to read the signs, and check out the overlooks. There’s a 10-mile road along the south rim that leads to several overlooks, so we followed along.
Here’s a good example of those steep, narrow granite walls:
Our favorite overlook turned out to be Sunset View. It’s near the end of the road and affords a spectacular view to the west down the length of the canyon. I can only imagine how good it actually looks at sunset.
Can you see our kids at the overlook?
This turned out to be a very nice spot to eat a PB&J sandwich for lunch.
Once we finished the drive, we turned around and headed back to the visitor center. The kids had mostly finished their Junior Ranger workbooks, but they needed to attend a ranger program. Thankfully, there was one available at that time which sounded really awesome—our kids had the chance to look directly at the sun.
They’re all now blind.
Ok, not really. There was a ranger who set up a solar telescope, fitted with a special lens that allowed viewers to see the sun. And when I say “see the sun”, I mean see what it looked like 8 minutes ago, because that’s how long it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth’s surface. We each took a turn looking through the lens. It had a red filter, but you could clearly see a solar flare and a couple of sunspots. Pretty neat stuff.
The kids got their junior ranger badges and we were on our way back to Grand Junction by early afternoon. One of our tricks for making long road trips palatable for the family is to stop along the way and grab milkshakes at a fast-food place. We found a McDonald’s in Montrose and got milkshakes there.
I got five for a family of six. Little Drew has shown signs of a possible milk allergy or lactose-intolerance.
That didn’t stop him from wanting a milkshake, though. In the end, like the Allies leading up to World War II, we tried the appeasement strategy.
Maybe not our best idea.
We finally reached Grand Junction, and then promptly drove past it. The reason was that we wanted to see
Colorado National Monument, bordering the west side of the city. We only had about 90 minutes or so before our dinner reservation, but we figured that would be enough time to do a quick drive-through and collect yet another National Park passport stamp.
Whenever I plan our trips, I always try to cover as much ground as we can in order to try and see as much as we can. But then when we get to a particular location, I tend to be a completist. I don’t want to miss out on seeing anything of interest. In the same way, I’m the guy who, when playing video games, has to find every single secret door, kill every bad guy, etc., before moving on to the next level. This is making you want to vacation with me, isn’t it?
So, in the spirit of such completism, here is our McTour of Colorado National Monument.
The first stop was the visitor center. They had an exhibit about the first road built there, with a sample dynamite plunger. That’s where Scotty happened.
Passport stamp obtained. Moving on!
The road climbs to the top of the mesa, and winds for about 20 miles, giving many views of red rock formations. The most famous is this one, called Independence Monument.
See? I told you it was worth the drive-through. Most of our “tour” involved pulling over at an overlook, snapping a photo and moving on. Here are a couple of samples:
With that, it was time for dinner, so we bid adieu (ok, not really, we just left) and drove back into Grand Junction. For the third time today.
Dinner was at the
Ale House, which is owned and operated by the Breckenridge Brewing Company. It had been a long 4-day stretch without a burger for me, so it was finally time to end that streak. I’d chosen this place for 3 reasons: 1) it had good reviews, 2) beer, and 3) it had a 50/50 burger on the menu.
A 50/50 burger, if you’re not familiar with this particular slice of heaven, is a burger made out of a patty that consists of 50% ground beef and 50% ground bacon. Yes, ground bacon. Yes, it’s absolutely wonderful for your heart.
I’d first tried one at Slater’s 50/50 in the wonderfully-named town of Rancho Cucamonga, California, and liked it enough that I wanted more. This particular version also featured cheese, a fried egg (and I know most of you just hurled in your mouth at that) and an “apricot glaze”.
It was terrific! Because of the bacon content, the 50/50 burger tends to be a little saltier than your average hamburger, so the fried egg and apricot glaze served to balance that out. I also had a pint of the Breckenridge Vanilla Porter that was on top, and it was just a fantastic beer. Very smooth and creamy.
It appears the boys enjoyed their pizza as well.
All in all, we thought the food here was excellent, and are happy to award the Ale House a Drooling Homer Excellence in Unpretentious Dining Award.
Lodging that night was provided by the
Econo Lodge of Grand Junction. This was another Priceline special—we got the room for about $60! And they had free breakfast! Given our experience the previous night, though, we wondered what kind of experience we’d have.
It turned out our fears were unfounded. The place was clean, pleasant, and the guy at the front desk even put out fresh chocolate chip-cookies for us when we arrived. Note to hotel desk clerks: I can be bought with chocolate-chip cookies. So the Econo Lodge gets a thumbs-up!
Coming Up Next: We finally reach Moab, Utah. Get ready for a whole mess of red rock photos.
I guess that'll keep you on your toes.
Why would you want to steal a pillow.... ugh.
No! For real? Did someone modify that?? 
<------ Yes a thumb.
(sorry, I missed the elk instead of moose pile on) 
