KOA Buena Vista Campground, Buena Vista, Colorado. Tachometer – 2680 miles
Click here for Pictures
Shabbat Shalom.
We spent some time in the campground playground this morning before heading off to the next national park. If you have never heard of it, that’s ok, neither did we until we saw that it is conveniently located on our way to the Rockies. The Gunnison is a river that flows east west here in Colorado and there is a 40 mile section that runs through a very deep gorge. At the “Black Canyon†part, for a few miles, the distance between the canyon walls is less than a mile, but the height is between 500-700 meters, which means that the river hardly gets to see any sunlight. Hence black.
We spent a few hours in the park, stopping at some viewpoints and also going on a short hike. The sheer drop was truly impressive, but unfortunately the pictures do not convey the depth so well. After leaving the park, we continued with the Gunnison river, driving eastward on highway 50 (same 50 from Nevada). An hour later we stopped to stretch the kids’ legs at a lakeside formed by the damming of the river and then continued the drive.
The next attraction came at Monarch Pass, 11,300 feet. This pass is also the continental divide, meaning that snows melting west of this point will flow to rivers going to the pacific ocean, and any melt going eastward will eventually reach the Atlantic. We took a gondola up to the summit of Monarch mountain, 12,000 feet and enjoyed a very nice view east and west. It was very cold outside and Paola made sure the kids had enough layers to make a layer cake. Ron enjoyed picking at the snow with his new water resistant mittens.
We continued driving for another hour and reached Buena Vista where we are camping for the night. Nothing much here except nice mountain views. We got here early enough to enjoy a half hour in the playground before dinner.
Tomorrow we will try to reach Rocky Mountain National Park.
Good night
Hemi
This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Big Trip, Colorado, North America RV 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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