Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Over the weekend, Nathan and I took a road trip to visit the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Colorado has four National Parks and this was the only one we hadn't made it to yet. 

We headed out Friday morning, enjoyed the beautiful drive and fall colors, made it to Montrose and dropped our stuff off at our AirBNB tiny house...

It was a perfect little spot for us...a fun new(ish) tiny house with a porch and a gorgeous view. There were also resident chickens and eggs that we were welcome to. (We didn't end up doing any cooking so didn't take advantage of the eggs but loved the idea.)

From our tiny house, we headed to the park and drove the South Rim road, stopping at about half of the viewpoints. The pictures don't do it justice, really. Here are some random ones from Friday evening...

Do you see Nathan standing on the post in that bottom left photo? And more from Friday's sunset at Painted Wall viewpoint...

We then headed into town for dinner before calling it a night at our cozy little tiny house. Saturday morning, we stopped in town for some provisions and then drove the East Portal Road down to the river at the base of the canyon. We ate a picnic lunch there and wandered a bit, enjoying the fall colors and learning interesting things about the history of the area. (And we were thankful for our new tires and brakes on the van, as the road had a 16% grade in places.)

We then drove back up to the South Rim road and visited the Visitor Center before tackling the Oak Flat Trail, which was listed as a strenuous 1.5 mile loop but wasn't bad at all. The hike took us down into the canyon a bit and offered some different views. We then drove to the end of the road again and stopped at Dragon Point on the way back. We took so many pictures over the two days! Here are a few more from Saturday afternoon...

We had an earlier dinner Saturday night at the local steakhouse then enjoyed some Netflix and called it a night, listening to the wind. 

Sunday, we got checked out and on the road. We decided to take the scenic route on the way back (we'd taken I-70 on the way there). It should only have taken about half an hour longer...about 6.5 hours of driving. We stopped for lunch and afternoon coffee/tea and thoroughly enjoyed the scenery. And then we got stuck in traffic. For hours. And hours. It was a little bit crazy. At one point, our phone navigation told us the road ahead was completely closed, but we pressed on, as we saw everyone else was doing. As best we can tell, there may have been some big horn sheep blocking the road at the top of one of the passes, combined with a ridiculous number of people stopping to take pictures of leaves. (It was a nice spot, but not the best of the spots we'd seen all day plus there was actually plenty of parking so we can't figure out why that caused such a back up.) In any case, we finally made it home about 11 hours after leaving. Long day.

Traffic aside, we had a lovely weekend...were quite impressed with the Black Canyon of the Gunnison...and enjoyed the time and conversation.