Hooray for Ouray! (Part 1: The Drive)

We've had the opportunity to go on three family vacations since we moved to Colorado at the end of May 2012.  We first visited Colorado Springs (about 2 hours from Loveland), then Glenwood Springs (about 4 hours from Loveland), and finally, just this past August, the Ouray/Telluride area (about 6 hours from here).  They have all been enjoyable trips, but this last one was especially memorable.  I plan to share photos from our trip in several posts.  By the time I'm done, I think you'll know where I'd recommend you vacation if ever you ask: Ouray!  (Pronounced oo-RAY, after the Ute Indian chief of that name).

The first reason you should go is the drive.  Once you get past Denver, which is not a very pretty city, it's a lovely, lovely ride.  All the photos below I snapped out the windshield or the passenger-side window while B.J. drove.

Though the views are breath-taking, the drive is not always a relaxing one for the driver.  In order to get to the southwestern side of the state, one has to cross over the Continental Divide, which means a lot of steep grades both up and down.  If the grades themselves don't make you a bit nervous, the "runaway truck" ramps might!

If you'd like to stop on your way to or from Ouray, Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park lies right along the way.  Never head of that national park before?  Don't feel bad - until a few months ago we hadn't, either.  Black Canyon doesn't boast the beautiful, warm colors or the size of the Grand Canyon, but it's still impressive in it's own right.  Author Duane Vandenbusche wrote this about Black Canyon: "Several canyons of the American West are longer and some are deeper, but none combines the depth, sheerness, narrowness, and darkness, and dread of the Black Canyon."  We visited Black Canyon on the way home.  We didn't spend a lot of time there (Eli was sleeping - and he needed sleep!), and we found it a bit anti-climatic simply because of all the other beautiful things we'd seen that week.  But someday we might go back and do a bit more hiking in this little-known national park.  Our first glimpse of the canyon:

I "panned" to get this picture: it is three separate frams that I merged in Photoshop.  You can see the white rapids of the Gunnison River near the bottom left of the image.  I like this picture because it gives one a feel for how narrow and steep the canyon is.  Why is it called Black Canyon?  It's sheerness makes it so that part of it is shadowed almost the entire day, except when the sun is directly overhead.  Those shadows make the canyon look dark and forboding, and the drab-colored rocks look black. 

I took the two photos below while hiking the short distance from the van to the rim of the canyon.  

 

That's the end of Part 1.  Stay tune for Part 2!  (But no guarantees how soon it'll appear - blogging has had to take a backseat in my life lately!  :-)