Due to a scheduling issue at work, I had to work the entirety of last weekend, but then ended up with four days off in a row this weekend. I didn't even have to use a vacation day for it. I mean, yeah, I had to work through a weekend at 3:00 AM, so it wasn't free or anything, but still, it was really cool. I figured I had to do something worthwhile with my weekend instead of just sitting around the house picking my nose like I usually do.
The problem was that my wife didn't get any of those days off, not even the regular weekend, much less the extra days I got. So, if I was going to do anything special, it was going to have to be just the kids and me. Was I up for that kind of responsibility? I only became an adult this year, after all.
I decided to go for it. I had planned a whole excursion for my wife and I to take on our anniversary, and then circumstances had nixed it on me. But me and the kids could do it on the cheap, camping at all the places that my wife and I would have had a fancy hotel room or condo. It should work just fine. So, I reserved us a couple of campsites, and started getting ready. I planned out the meals to be as simple as possible--cereal for breakfast every morning, sandwiches for lunch every afternoon, and hot dogs for dinner every night. I did the shopping myself, did the packing myself. My wife only helped out a little with the kids clothes. This thing was going to sink or swim completely based on my performance.
On Friday morning we headed out. We got out the door around 7:30, and had to make two quick stops at the grocery store--to get ice, and replenish the milk that the kids had already drunk--and at the gas station--to fill up both the gas tank and my soda mug. We actually hit the road at about 8:00. It was a pretty long drive. According to Google Maps, it should have taken us five hours and thirty minutes even. I think we pretty much matched that pace too. The first snag appeared as we were passing through Grand Junction, Colorado. It had been cloudy and gray, but in Grand Junction the clouds opened up, and started dumping the rain down. No more light sprinkles, this was heavy precipitation.
The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park was our destination, which lies approximately 70 miles to the southeast of Grand Junction. How likely was it that this rain wasn't harrying the campers there like it was the drivers here? I was worried. We'll just put it that way. Sprinkles came and went, but it never poured again after Grand Junction. We got there right about 1:30 PM.
We were driving to the visitor center, when we came around a bend, and suddenly the trees melted away, and this view came into sight:
"Wow!" we all thought. The visitor center could wait. We needed to get out and experience this. It was sprinkling a little bit still, but not enough to dull our enthusiasm. We took a lot of pictures there at Tomichi Point. Here's a couple of my favorites:
There was a trail that led from where we were all the way to the visitor center, but the possibility of rain made us cautious--a theme for the whole trip, but also a very wise choice. If we'd decided to walk, it could have been ugly, because in the time it took us to make it to the visitor center, the skies opened up and the rain came down profusely. We ran inside as fast as we could, and took shelter in the bookstore. We looked through the books, pins, patches, and other various knickknacks. In case you were wondering, and I know you were, here's the patch I added to my collection:
It was raining so hard that we didn't dare go outside. We kept walking circles around the very crowded bookstore. We picked up Junior Rangers booklets to work on. We went out on the covered porch and ate some lunch. We looked at the exhibits. Then the movie that played in their theater began, and we sat through a showing of that. Probably the most full showing they'd had there in a long time.
Finally, the rain had let off enough that we could head down to the Gunnison Point overlook just down the stairs from the back of the visitor center.
Again, it was overwhelmingly beautiful and awe-inspiring.
Excuse the overuse of the panoramic pictures, but this was just one of those places that doesn't lend itself well to the normal aspect ratio. It was just to grand and dramatic for that. Click on the pictures to get the larger view, so they don't just look like goofy little tiny strips.
We all gaped at the stomach churning drop that lay just beyond the railing.
Now that the weather had cleared up enough, we got in the car to head to the next viewpoint. This one was called Pulpit Rock.
This was the first place that we could get a really good look at the river down below, because the canyon's walls had become less steep here. In the other places, it was so steep that you couldn't see the bottom in most places.
The Little Guy was getting on my nerves already at this point. He didn't want to just stand at the rail and look out, of course. Instead, he was running around in circles, jumping from rock to rock, and trying to slip under and climb on the railing. I held his hand, or assigned another kid to hold it for me. The kids tended to go derelict on their duty really quickly however, so I was taking pictures with one eye on the camera and the other tracking Little all the time. It was a little nerve-wracking.
After Pulpit Rock, we moved on to the Cross Fissures View. This one was really cool, because it seemed like the opposite wall of the canyon was so close that we could almost have reached out and touched it. It was great for echoes.
Little continued climbing all over the railing, and I knew that it was lucky that my wife didn't have the weekend off, because she would have been torn up inside with anxiety having her kids so close to such a drop-off.
The kids really got into their echo calling. Now they were getting on my nerves in a new way. We moved over to a view of a side canyon...a cross fissure, I suppose. Despite there being no river to cut its way through there, it was still as astoundingly deep as everywhere else. I kept getting struck anew with bouts of vertigo.
We moved on to Chasm View.
And I continued to keep a tight hold on Little's hand. The next spot we stopped at was the Painted Wall.
This is the spot where the geology of the eons etched the wall in stripes.
At this point, we were about ready to give up and head back to the campsite. We still had to set up the tent and get dinner, and it was getting late, but my daughter really wanted to see the next viewpoint, because it had a cool name--Dragon Point.
Dragon Point is named for the stripes on the wall. The two large ones on the top they say look like dragons flying along the wall.
I can see it. It's cool.
This viewpoint had a bunch of interesting juniper trees along the trail. What made this tree grow like that, I wonder.
We were ready to go to our campsite and get our tent set up and cook some dinner, but Little insisted that we take him to the visitor center, so he could turn in his Junior Ranger packet. He'd finished it while he was in the car in between viewpoints. He wanted another badge to pin to his hat. Now he has three. Soon, his hat will be covered with them.
We moved on to the campsite, and discovered an interesting thing, somehow, I had reserved the handicapped campsite. I looked at my reservation sheet, and I saw a paragraph that I hadn't noticed before. It said that I might be asked to show proof of my handicap upon arrival at the site. That was not good. I don't know how I managed to sign up for the handicapped spot without ever being asked if I was handicapped, but I certainly had no proof to show. What if they told me I couldn't camp there? And what if there were no open sites anywhere else? It was the Fourth of July weekend after all. Everyone was out camping. This could be bad.
I went to find the campground host, and informed him of my predicament. He told me that this kind of thing happened all the time, and that he hated the stupid reservation website that the campground used. He said I could stay there if I wanted to, or he could see if he could find us another site. I had to take him up on the latter, because the handicapped site looked like it wouldn't fit our tent. After a long search, we finally found a site we liked, and started setting things up.
Once we had everything set up, we got started with dinner. Since it was my plan, I chose the easiest dinner possible, hot dogs roasted over the fire. At least I thought it would be the easiest thing. Our firewood had different ideas, though. Our firewood chunks were pretty big, and we had no hatchet to break it down into smaller kindling. I think we had that problem with starting fires at Bryce Canyon back in April too. It looks like the number one addition to our camping supplies needs to be a hatchet.
We burned half a package of napkins trying to get the wood to light. It would for a short period, but it would eventually go out. The wood wasn't even wet or anything from the rain, so I had no excuse. Maybe some lighter fluid would help too--just soak the logs in it, and presto!
In the morning, things were gloomier and wetter than they had been the day before.
What's worse, we had to pack up everything and move along. We had a reservation to stay in Colorado National Monument that night, and nowhere to stay here.
That meant stuffing a wet, muddy tent into a bag and putting it into the trunk with all our clothes and sleeping bags. It was going to make a mess of everything.
Putting the tent away was pretty unpleasant. We tried covering it with plastic bags--my wife had bought a whole roll of them at the dollar store for us--but the bags were tiny, and it would have taken at least twenty of them to cover the tent, probably the whole roll. So, we gave up, bit the bullet, and just put everything in the car regardless of how wet it was.
We were off to spend the day in the Curecanti National Recreation Area. As we were heading down the road, we came to Tomichi Point again. We had to slam on the breaks again and stop there, because the low-hanging, misery-inducing clouds turned out to have a silver lining. They made the canyon even more beautiful. Here's the pictures we took.
We stopped again at the visitors center, and went down to see how much more awesome Gunnison Point was with clouds all over it.
This picture is my favorite from the whole trip:
The mist flowing through the cliffs is just beautiful. I liked this one a lot too:
Then we got in the car and started south to Curecanti. At this point, I was pretty discouraged about the weather. It had been sunny on and off the day before, but now the sky was a ceiling of slate from horizon to horizon. It felt like it would probably rain all day long, and never let up for more than a few minutes here and there.
Was this what we wanted to spend the day in? Would it be better if we just turned around and drove home, saving ourselves further irritation? The Black Canyon was the thing that I had wanted to see the most. I wouldn't be too upset if we had to do without the other stuff. Oh, except for the Curecanti Needle. I really wanted to see that too. That would be a bummer to miss out on.
I decided we'd give it a chance. We had all day to drive home if we had to. First, we'd at least go to Curecanti, and see if the weather improved at all for us. If it did, we could see a few things, and hope for the best.
We had to stop at the world's oldest gas station in the town of Cimarron to gas up. The pump still had those numbers that roll around on a dial instead of the digital ones.
I told my kids to get out and take a look at it, because they would probably never see anything like it again. I haven't seen pumps like it in probably thirty years. It was kind of comforting, like a lullaby from my youth, to hear the ticking noise the pump made as it filled the van with fuel. It's funny how things like the feel of a material, smells, or sounds can evoke a state of mind from long ago when you last experienced them, bypassing language and thought altogether.
I went in to the bathroom. Then, coming out, I happened to exit the store right behind a park ranger. I took advantage of the luck, and asked him what I should see and do while at Curecanti. There was a visitor center right next to the gas station, although it was unmanned at present. He didn't know the schedule of when people would be there, but there were several exhibits outside of it that we could look at, plus a drive up the canyon to a dam if we were interested. He gave me several pamphlets that gave me more information.
We decided to drive up the canyon first. It was something made by railroad men in the 1890s. I don't know if there was just a different spirit in those days or what, but they just never took no for an answer. As we drove through the canyon, you could tell that it had been blasted out by men, not formed by the river like the Black Canyon was. This was the spot where they figured they'd gone far enough, and moved the railroad out of the canyon.
Normally, there's a big train engine on that piece of track next to the bridge, but it was out for cleaning and restoration, so we missed our chance.
Of course it started to rain on us the moment we got out of the car, so we pretty quickly got back in. We decided to go back to the visitor center and look at the exhibits rather than continue on to the dam. The kids thought it was pretty cool, especially Little, although he was miffed when we wouldn't let him get into the train cars like he wanted to. There were signs posted everywhere to stay off, so we helped him understand what he couldn't read yet.
We got back in the car and started back on our way. The rain got worse, and I worried some more, but then it let up as we came closer to our destination. Little forced us to take a couple of potty breaks, and then eventually we made it to Pioneer Point, where we could get a look at the Curecanti Needle.
That big triangular rock spire in the middle of the picture is the Curecanti Needle. It's a 700 foot tall piece of granite that the river carved into the middle of its channel.
Unfortunately, it looks much more impressive from below, from ground level. Here on the upper rim of the canyon, it almost looks small. While planning for the trip, I'd been seeing pictures like this one from a guy named Granger Meador on Flickr.
This was probably the one thing I wanted to see most of all. Even above the Black Canyon. I'd looked at dozens of impressive pictures like that, and I wanted one of my own. However, the only way to take one of those impressive pictures was down below. There were two ways to get down below. One was to make your way down to the Morrow Point boat dock and take the boat tour, but that was going to cost us $100 bucks to get the whole family aboard. I didn't have that kind of cash available. The other was to take the Curecanti Creek trail to the bottom. This is a shot of the Curecanti Creek from where we were:
It is a tough, strenuous hike, especially on the way back up. With Little along, I couldn't justify going down there. It would be way too much for him. We'd probably spend our whole day on the hike, and I'd wind up having to carry him for a majority of the trip back up. Instead, we just looked from above.
Also, there was always the threat of rain. The clouds were lowering, how long until they pounced again?
We contented ourselves with a picnic lunch with the needle as our backdrop.
Yeah, you know you wanted to see it.
The kids started working on their booklets, and my oldest son and I decided we had to take advantage of the bathrooms there. They were flush toilets! Something they didn't have at the campground in Black Canyon. Since we were leaving the others in the car while we were using the bathrooms, I left the windows rolled down, because it's summer, and that kind of thing can bring about death. Kind of silly that I worried about that considering what actually happened. I came out of the bathroom and the weather had turned to full downpour in the few minutes I'd been in there. I had the keys in my pocket. The kids couldn't roll the windows back up by themselves. ran as fast as I could to the car, and rolled the windows up, but it was too late. the whole dashboard and the driver's and passenger's seat were completely drenched. We used my sweatshirt to mop it all up.
Good thing we weren't hiking down the Curecanti Trail right now, huh? It could have been a lot worse.
We were done with Curecanti after that. In the visitor center, they told us we could turn our Junior Ranger booklets in at the Black Canyon visitor center. Since that was only a few minutes off our route, it seemed like the best way to go. Little busily worked on his booklets while we drove back where we came from. Sadly, the entrance gate to the park was super crowded. It took as much time to get through that line as it did to drive all the way from Curecanti.
Eventually, we got in there, though. The ranger who checked their booklets had a good time with them. He talked hin through the whole book, and gave him a hard time for not having finished all the pages. We didn't have anything to color with, which made some of the pages impossible to complete. So, the ranger had him do pushups to finish earning their badge.
Now he had two Junior Ranger badges, one for Black Canyon and one for Curecanti, and we were still going to get one more at the Colorado National Monument tomorrow. Pretty cool. We got back in the car, and sped north for our final destination of the trip.
On the way there, the kids asked me to stop at the store, because they insisted that I pick up some ketchup and mustard...unfortunately I'd forgotten those items at home, so our hot dogs had been lacking a little oomph. Speaking of hot dogs missing something, we also decided to get some fire starting stuff. The kids didn't want lukewarm hot dogs and they didn't want to do without s'mores. We already knew our wood wasn't going to light up easily, so we bought some specially treated kindling, along with a special fire log type thing. Basically something that wouldn't just stop burning a few minutes after we lit it.
We drove into the Colorado National Monument right at sunset when the conditions were perfect. The cliffs couldn't have been more beautiful. My oldest son said this was his favorite part, because we were on the underside of the cliffs and monoliths. Everything looked more impressive. We drove past Balanced Rock and stopped to take a look at it. While we did, we noticed a bighorn sheep way up on the ridge of the cliff, silhouetted against the sky. Then we drove through the two tunnels that are chiseled into the cliffs.
Finally, we made it to our campsite, pulled out our sodden tent, and set it up. It was kind of a difficult task. The ground wouldn't take stakes well. We got rocks to pound them in with, but the ground was crumbly, and the stakes just came right back out. On the other end of the tent, the ground was pure rock, and you couldn't pound in a stake at all. We managed to get the stakes to stay on the one side, and I used large rocks to hold them down on the other side.
We were rushing to get it set up the whole time, because it was starting to sprinkle, and we could hear thunder. It only rained a moment, though, so our haste was unnecessary. The wind was blowing hard, however, and in no time, our tent, which had been still wet from that morning, was completely dry. That made me very happy.
Now it was time for dinner, but we had an issue.
Stenciled on the side of the barbecue in every campsite were the words "Charcoal fires only." #@%&$*!!!! Okay, we'd made a special trip to the store to buy something that would guarantee us a fire, only to find this waiting for us? Seriously, what vengeful pagan god had we angered before leaving on this trip? Some jackal-headed titan was having a great time toying with us.
What could we do now? Get back in the car and drive all the way back to that same store we'd just visited to buy some charcoal and lighter fluid? It seemed like that was our only option. Instead, I looked around at all the other campers with their barbecues going, roasting up whatever they were eating for dinner, and I thought, surely one of them has some extra coal they could give us.
I walked over to our neighbor's campsite, and asked for mercy. She was really nice, and totally happy to let us have some. In fact, she loaned us her bag of coal, her bottle of lighter fluid, and her lighter as well. We've always had a propane barbecue, so I was as inept as they come getting the coals going...but the kids eventually thought to suggest that maybe I should read the instructions on the back of the bag. Following those directions, we managed to get those coals turning red.
Soon, we had hot dogs...and my daughter's vegetarian meat substitute...crisping up on the grill. With our newly purchased ketchup and mustard, we ate proper hot dogs for dinner. Huzzah! We defied you jackal-headed titan! Not only that, but we also toasted up some marshmallows and made s'mores too.
It doesn't quite have the same feel roasting marshmallows over a pile of coals, but the taste is just as good. The kids were excited too, because we had tons of extra fixings. I'd bought enough marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers to have s'mores both nights. So, they didn't have to stop at just one.
"I helped you wash your dishes," he said.
"That's right," she said, "Thank you."
Apparently, while we were all hurrying to get our tent set up, he had discovered the water station for the campground. It was right next to our campsite, built into a big rock. It had a drinking fountain and a spray faucet as well. While everyone worked on the tent, Little occupied himself playing with the fountain and the faucet.
Then, the woman came over with her dishes from her dinner, and he offered to turn the water on for her while she washed her dishes. I'm pretty sure she could have done it herself. I never looked at it, but I doubt it had to be held on to work. She humored him, though, and talked with him, and told him about her dog.
Little stayed nearby the water station all evening. He helped the woman get water for her dog, wash out her dog's bowls, and eventually went to her campsite to meet her dog. After a while, I thought I probably better get him, before the woman started feeling like she should charge me for babysitting or something, but she assured me that it was fine, and she was enjoying his company. I think he'd made himself a new friend.
After dinner was all done, we went to the bathroom and brushed our teeth, got into our pajamas, and the kids got in the tent to lay down and...horse around for a while...not go to sleep. I stayed out in the car, taking advantage of the fact that we had a decent cell signal to send pictures and videos of our trip to my wife. I was just finishing up, when the rain started to fall a little heavier. So, I scurried to the tent, before doing so would mean getting soaked. I had no idea what was in store for us.
The skies opened up, and a crazy thunder storm raged overhead. We worried that we would get washed away, but that didn't happen. We got plenty of drips coming through the tent, but we didn't get flooded out. The thunder was loud and the rain was heavy, but we were having fun in the safety of our tent.
We all pushed our air mattresses as close together as we could to avoid the drips. All in all, though, the storm was a lot of bluster without any staying power. It passed over pretty quickly, and by the time I woke up the next morning, the tent was completely dry...on the top anyway. Underneath was still pretty muddy and wet, and we'd discover that when we went to put it away. But otherwise, we'd escaped relatively unscathed.
Oh, except this:
I guess we were still unscathed. There was no lasting damage or anything, but the wind from the storm had dislodged one of our insecure stakes from the sandy ground, and the corner of the tent had collapsed inward on us.
It was on the side where none of us were sleeping, though, so it didn't matter much.
I couldn't sleep very late the next morning. I woke up at 6:00 AM, and wound up sneaking out of bed and going outside to hang around until everyone else woke up. When I walked down to the bathroom, I happened upon another bunny. I haven't mentioned them yet, but these things were everywhere. We saw them at the Black Canyon, we saw them in Curecanti, and we especially saw them at the Colorado National Monument. The campground was teeming with them.
I had the camera on me, and nothing more pressing to do, so I got a shot of the rabbit.
After everyone woke up and had breakfast, we finally had a chance to get some hiking in. There was pretty much no fear of being caught out in a rainstorm anymore.
We did still have Little, so we kept the hikes pretty short. We walked the Window Rock Trail, which took us out to this view of the Window Rock:
It's a spot where there's a hole in the cliff. It was cool to be right above it, but it definitely wasn't the best viewing spot for it. Later, we drove around to the other side of the canyon, and I was able to get this picture of it:
That gives you a much better look at it, just not an up close one. I had to employ the zoom lens to get this shot to look right.
When we got back to the car from the Window Rock Trail, we noticed that another trail head was right next to us. So, we left the car, and walked down the one hundred yards and started into that hike.
This was called the Canyon Rim Trail, and it led us along...well, the canyon's rim. It provided some great views, like this one of the Independence Monument.
And eventually led us to this overlook:
We took some pictures and were about to head back to the car, but the kids weren't convinced that the walk was over.
The trail did keep going, so we walked on. There were more sights to see. Like this:
I thought this tree was neat looking:
Soon, we were within sight of the visitor center. We had to decide whether we would just go on up, or turn back and then take the car to the visitor center.
The kids were pretending to be robots as they walked. my younger daughter spoke in a droning monotone, and Little, since he was a robot cat, responded in a loud scratchy growl. After a half hour of this, I was almost ready to just jump off one of those cliffs we were hiking next to.
We went back to the car, then drove to the visitor center. I'd printed the Junior Ranger booklet out for Colorado National Monument before leaving home, so the kids had been working on them before we even came. We were ready, especially now that we'd taken a few hikes.
The ranger at the visitor center went through the booklet with Little, and then swore them in. Sadly, they were out of badges. We provided them with our mailing address, and they promised to send them as soon as they got their new shipment. Until then, Little's hat will remain the same.
I got my patch to add to my collection.
I'm starting to worry about the fact that every patch is the same shape. I'm going to have to start looking specifically for different shaped patches from here on out, because if they're all the same, it'll be a kind of lame collection.
Next up was Otto's Trail. That was a cool trail that took us out to a close up view of one of the monoliths.
It was right there next to us. I didn't even need to do much zooming to get a good picture.
That was pretty much our final hike. We sat down and ate some lunch at the top, and then drove around the Rim Rock Drive. It took us in a big circuitous loop through the various canyons of the monument. We saw the Coke Ovens:
Which were interesting, because at this point the clouds had completely burned off, and you can see the washed out coloring of the stone in that picture compared to the orange color of the stone in all the other pictures. I'd heard it was important to see the canyons in the early morning or at sunset time, and now I see why. It really does make a big difference.
After the Coke Ovens, we didn't even really stop anymore except to use the bathroom. I think we'd just reached our limit. There is only so much you can do in one weekend before you stop caring about interesting rock formations or beautiful canyons. It was time to head for home.
All in all, despite some of our setbacks, and the constant rain and/or threat of rain, it was successful and fun. I think we may have to do another trip like this before summer's over. Unless, of course, my wife can get the time off. Then, I suppose we'll invite her along too.
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