Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Today we head half an hour up the road to visit our first National Park - Black Canyon of the Gunnison. This is a beautiful deep canyon with many viewing spots along it's rim that bring you up to huge sheer drop offs. Barriers tend to be post and rail fencing - three horizontal timber poles. OSH would have a field day here, America is certainly a land of contrasts - trip over and you can sue for negligence but all that is required between you and a vertical drop twice the height of the empire state building are three horizontal poles - better described as a low ladder!ove this park and spend the morming here. It is a cloudless still warm sunny spring day. The girls meet their first chipmonk. We finish the trip through the canyon with a drive down to the canyon floor - a spectacular drive down a steep grade with many switchbacks.
Our next stop is Ouray - described as the Little Switzerland of America. We climb up into the mountains that have been our backdrop since arriving in Grand Junction. Once again the scenery is stunning and re realise that this type of beauty is not confined just to NZ. Ouray is a lovely little alpine town and we take time out to visit Box Canyon Falls - a stunning waterfall - not so much for the waterfall itself but the rock formations carved out by the water and and the steel catwalks to get you there and back.
Onward towards Silverton via the "Million Dollar Highway". This is a spectacular pass through the San Juan Mountain range with steep drop-offs, enormous views, and nail biting corners. The road is the old railway line and for some reason the camber falls to the precipices and there are no vehicle barriers - and we were on the drop off side! Apparently there are no barriers so that the snow ploughs can push the snow right off the edge. As we climb higher we come across beautiful areas of snow, hanging icicles, and lakes frozen over with ice. But today was beautiful and warm - tee shirt weather. We stop and play in the snow. Locals probably thought we were nuts.
Silverton is an interesting town with really, really wide dirt roads, a station for the popular Silverton Durango railway, and little else. We did find a really nice cafe that served the best coffee we have found in the U.S so far! We headed on to Durango - our final destination for the day. Again, the drive was beautiful, and we passed some spectacular houses and ski chalets. We spotted some elk just to finish off one of our favourite days. The Travelodge Motel would not win motel of year but there was a Dairy Queen across the road and Nige made buddies with a guy who had a black corvette. We even managed a late trip to good old Walmart!
- comments