Day 7 - Black Canyon - often overlooked (pun intended)

Thursday, June 16, 2016
Posted from: Mancos, CO

Miles driven: 247

Total trip miles: 1404

Total National parks visited: 2

We left Gunnison, CO on our way to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. To be honest, I had not heard of this national park prior to planning this trip. It wasn't a national park until 1999. Prior to that it was a national monument. It has some of the lowest annual visitor numbers (175,000 in 2013) but honestly, it was a great stop. If you are driving through Colorado, get off the interstate and take the back roads! We went over 4 mountain passes to get there, so make sure you have the right equipment if you are towing. Having said that, it isn't a park I would go 100's of miles out of my way to see. It made sense for us to stop on our way from Rocky Mountain NP to Mesa Verde NP. 

Here we are ready to leave the Mesa Campground in Gunnison, CO. I'm actually supposed to be taking a picture of the camper at our site in each campground...I am not doing a great job so far. 

Here is our worthy and able driver stopping for a quick stretch. It actually hurts if you look at this picture for too long. (Yes, his foot is on the dash.)

Every time we drive on newly black topped road, we play the Sh-Boom song that they played in the Cars Disney movie the first time they drove on the "new road that Lightening McQueen done made for us." (As Mater says in his strongest southern accent.)

Matt was actually taking a selfie when suddenly three other people joined him. 

We pulled the camper through this national park. It was only once we were deep in that I thought to ask a ranger if there was a turnaround. (Oops) Thankfully, there was one.

The kids completed their Junior Ranger books in record time. It was actually a difficult little booklet. We attended a ranger program on raptor birds, and the nice young ranger offered to swear in the kids as junior rangers while we were on the lookout. The junior ranger badges were very cool. They weren't plastic like most. They were wooden.

When they were done, it was high fives all around!

We stopped at the turnaround and ate lunch. We met and chatted with a really nice family. They gave us some helpful tips for our next couple stops. You really do meet some nice people when you travel. They told us to avoid the Million Dollar Highway (550 between Ouray and Silverton). We had already been warned by my parents about trying to pull the trailer on this stretch so made plans to avoid it. They said it was scary in a minivan. Yikes. 

Matt wanted me to take a picture of one of the many cattle signs we saw. He thought we could place them every 20 feet or so in Iowa.

We left the park and several miles down the road I navigated us into a wrong turn, and we ended up in the middle of a big bluegrass festival. We could see them laughing at us as we pulled up to the edge of the town called Telluride where there were 4 lanes of ticket takers. They politely asked if we were there for the festival. We said, no, we were headed to Mesa Verde NP. The lady laughed and said, "Then you took a wrong turn." (Not the words any self respecting navigator wants to hear.) We then asked (for the second time today) if there was a place for us to turn around. Then she said the magic word: Yes. Whew! 

On the bright side, had we not made the wrong turn, we would not have seen this or known that Telluride existed other than a dot on the map... And it was a cool place. We marked it as a potential future trip. 

It is a bit hard to see, but there was a giant tent community set up for the festival.

As usual, the scenery was fairly ho hum... 

And this is how Caleb slept for 2 hours.

Another long day of driving in the mountains, but with a lot of great stops and views along the way to help it not seem so long. We left Gunnison at 7:30 am and arrived at Mesa Verde NP at 4:30pm.