Black Canyon, Colorado

We spent a week close to Denver and enjoyed every minute of it. There are a lot of fun motorcycle roads in the area. But it was time to move on towards Las Vegas, stopping in Montrose, Colorado. After talking to a couple from Canada at Mt. Evans, we decided to take their advice and take a motorcycle ride around Rt. 92, called the West Elk Loop. So on to Montrose.

We decided to take the scenic route instead of the interstate highway.

After having our truck worked on in Denver, it didn’t do well over the mountains. It’s blowing black smoke, has no power and our gas mileage through the mountains was down to 6-7 mpg!!!!! We’re not sure what they did to it….. Might have to think about finding a mechanic in Las Vegas if this continues.

We reached Montrose just in time to go to bed

so that we could get up early the next morning for our ride. We found that our neighbor, Eric and Linda, from the Denver area was also camped here! They left the day before us. What a small world!

We were told it was supposed to rain, so we left home prepared. I love being prepared because it never rained!

I took this picture to show you just how big these mountains are.

We started out at Blue Mesa Dam. (I can’t even count at this point how many dams we’ve seen since we left home.)

The Colorado River Storage Project on the Upper Colorado River is the most complex and extensive river water development in the world. It includes drainage in Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico – about 1/12 the continental area of the United States!
Once we started on Rt. 92, we found a dirt road to a lodge, so we decided to check it out.

It kept going

And going

And going.

Never did see the lodge. We finally turned around to get back on track. Rt. 92 has some beautiful overlooks. On one of them, we met a guy who is a helicopter pilot out of Texas who has been traveling for about 7 weeks on his Harley. He was almost done the loop and loved it so we just had to share our Mt. Evans adventure with him. There was another person trying to coax their child out of the car, but they were afraid of heights and had been petrified on the whole drive (glad they didn’t go to Mt. Evans! (in case you missed that day’s blog, go back and look at the pictures from Mt. Evans)

The overlook was gorgeous and very, very windy. Look at Bill’s jacket! We had to find a secluded picnic table to eat lunch to hide from the wind.

Bill kind of liked the way this rock was balancing.

The Curecanti Needle is a nearly vertical pinnacle of quartz monzonite rising about 700 feet above Morrow Point Lake and has been a trademark of the area for many years. The first emblem used by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad in 1884 pictured the famous Curecanti Needle against the sun in the Black Canyon. The needle became a memorial to a brave engineer who lost his life trying to descend into the canyon by rope. (During the winter of 1881-82, over 1,000 men picked and shoveled away in the canyon to push the railroad westward.)

As we came around each curve the view was amazing.

Here are a few pictures looking down.

We came upon Black Canyon and took the ride up to the north rim, which was a dirt/gravel road. Black Canyon is described as “dramatic.” It was carved into the earth by the powerful Gunnison River. It is 2,700 feet deep and 53 miles long. It was originally designated a national monument in 1933, but was renamed a national park in 1999.

One attraction that’s hard to miss is the “Painted Wall.” It stands at 2,250 feet (that’s 1,000 feet taller than the Empire State Building). It’s the highest cliff in Colorado.

And of course the rest of the ride home was pretty.