We start out with a Happy Birthday to Danny Brown, who is officially an adult now.
Happy Birthday Danny!
This was a short day. We started late and then went up, and up, and up. We had to climb out of the giant sink that is Montrose. We were off to Cerro Summit at 7,966ft, which is more than 2,000ft above Montrose. On the way we stopped at a knife shop and Chris replaced his pocket knife that disappeared back in Wickenburg and I got more postcards for our ever-growing collection. The lady told us of an alternate way to see the Black Canyon, something many of the locals had suggested we should see and touted it as one of Colorado's best kept secrets.
At the summit (finally!). After hearing for days how rough the climbs at Lizardhead and Dallas Divide are, we were not expecting for this one to be so difficult! It was not as long of a climb, but it was very steep!
Yay! Downhill time!
To see the Black Canyon, or at least to get a good idea of what it looks like, we stopped at Morrow Point, just past the few buildings known as Cimarron.
We rode down a 1 mile long, quiet road that passed through the edge of the Canyon and lead to the Morrow Point Dam.
Emily is standing next to part of the old railroad that used to pass through the Canyon. We were sad to see that the train, which usually sits on top of the tracks over the raging river below, was away for repairs.
After relaxing at this scenic and interesting point, we realized that Chris' bike had a flat tire! After changing the flat, we couldn't get too much farther before the sun would set. There was a nice, mostly empty, campground at the entrance to the dam road, so we decided to camp there for the evening - 10 more miles wasn't going to make a big difference with our mileage total for the day.
We wanted to celebrate Danny's birthday with a tub of Moose Tracks ice cream (Danny's favorite), but the small grocery store in Cimarron didn't have any so we had to settle with Klondike bars!
28 June 2011
The next morning we had a breakfast of peanut butter on bread while this bold fellow looked for scraps:
We biked another summit! It was equally as steep as the day before. Eventually we made it to the peak of Blue Mesa summit. The mountains we had been encountering since Montrose had become less rocky, were not covered by gigantic pine trees, but were covered in dense, dark green grasses and bushes. This made for beautiful vistas such as the one below (taken from the Blue Mesa summit):
Soon we were headed downhill again and caught our first glimpse of the Blue Mesa reservoir. This is the largest reservoir in Colorado, and we were about to get a lengthy tour of its perimeter. We were sidetracked by biking and did not take pictures along the way....
We rode along the edge and over two bridges for over 10 miles. We had a gentle grade and a tremendous tail-wind to help us get through. It is such a strange sight to see such a large lake in the middle of mountains.
We made it into Gunnison and treated ourselves to an early dinner before heading over to the KOA for the night. The KOA had clean, hot showers, and soft grass to sleep on! We felt spoiled : )
GPS data:
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