Tuesday 21st April
A lovely sunny day greeted us as we set off early for our
next stop. Originally we were traveling to Gunnison, but had heard from our
ranger about Black Canyon National Park, which was a mere 5 mile off our route,
so we endeavoured to go and have a look, So tempted were we that we decided to
stay the night in the campground, no water, but electric hook-up for $9.00 per
night. Black Canyon NPS website had said that it did not, except for one site on B loop that was ADA, yet on arriving we found that not it was not only the ADA site that had electricity, all of B loop was open, hooked up and empty. Fortunate really as the ADA site was very small, ADA may as well have stood for American Dwarf Adapted.
Once we had set up camp we set off to explore The Black Canyon
Once we had set up camp we set off to explore The Black Canyon
First stop was the Visitor Centre, where we watched a very
interesting video, then sat in the sunshine and ate our lunch, before tackling
the Black Canyon.
Unfortunately words fail us yet again and we are stuck with
the old superlatives of awesome and stupendous and magnificent, because this
truly was all of those things. It was a canyon gouged out of the mountain range
by the Gunnison River, straight down from rim to river over 2000ft. the canyon
sides were huge slabs of metamorphic rock, shiny dark grey, with huge white
veins of pegmatite, creating an effect like a giant marble cake. Its
magnificence comes from being so narrow and so deep and with such vertical
sides. And so big, it is over 50 miles long. So difficult is the terrain at the
bottom that it was not explored properly until 1880, some thirty years after
the Grand Canyon had be tamed by Powell.
There is a road which travels along the south rim of the
canyon, giving us more than half a dozen new and jaw dropping views of the
Black Canyon. The trouble is that such scale is difficult to capture with a
photograph, also the splendour is actually quite tiring, so after we had our
fill of gawping we drove gently back to the trailer, where we had another campfire, courtesy of the surrounding
campers, who had left their wood behind after their weekend camping.
Glad you got to see this fabulous canyon -we loved it here, saw it briefly in 2009 then returned and camped for 3 nights in 2011 and hiked on a trail into the canyon. Also saw one of the best night skies, went to a Ranger talk and lots of telescopes and knowledgeable people - happy memories, thanks for reminding us
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