Oct 14

We left Ami's Acres Campground and headed west towards Grand Junction. We decided to stay west of Grand Junction in the James Robb State Park in Fruita. We were pleased to find out that Fruita had some excellent mountain biking trails through the desert.

We drove back to Grand Junction and cheered the Jays on to their victory.

Oct 15

Today's scenic drive was to the Colorado National Monument. This is a National Park featuring views of extensive canyons and giant rock formations. The very twisty road allowed us to see the sheer walls and red rock canyons. Early on in the drive we spotted 4 big horn sheep and a red tailed hawk.

We learned from the park ranger about how the area was formed geologically. These giant red formations used to be sand dunes - AT THE EQUATOR - and were deep under almost a mile of marine "mud". The weight of the marine mud under water hardened the dunes into sandstone. In a more recent geologic period, all of this sandstone was pushed up by earthquakes, and in most places all of the marine mud has eroded away. The sandstone erodes relatively easy, leaving some very impressive formations. The ranger commented that when they get a hard rain, they find waterfalls they never knew they had.

We drove on to Grand Mesa - Mesa National Forest. On the way to the plateau, we traveled through the National Forest. Most of the trees had lost their leaves and the remainder were a beautiful yellow colour. Once we got to the plateau, there were supposed to be over 300 lakes. We did see a number of small, uninhabited lakes. Very secluded.

We stopped in at the local bike shop to find out how to access the bike trails. We decided to check out the trails to make sure we would be comfortable doing them. Following the bike shop's directions, we went north east along Aspen to 17 3/4 Road, then headed north to N 3/10 to 18 Road. We could never figure out how they named these roads!! The drive to the desert involved a number of miles on dirt. Even though the sun was setting when we arrived, we figured that since we'd made this much effort to get here, we might as well check it out. We opted to try "Pumps, Bumps and Rollers", an intermediate trail. We had no idea how long the trail was, but it was lots of fun to start. There were a few sections where we needed to get off our bikes to walk through tight or steep spots. As the trail leveled out, there was a slight downhill, with lots of very fun twists and turns. But as the sun went down behind the mountains, our visibility declined quickly, introducing a new degree of difficulty. By the time we finished the long trail, we were in almost total darkness and had to climb a challenging gravel road back up to where we had left the truck. We were the only car in the parking lot….although we could see a few remaining cycling headlights wind their way through other trails.

Oct 16

Having enjoyed our trail ride yesterday, we were anxious to try it again in daylight. But first we had to move the trailer across the street to Monument RV (a paved paradise) as the state park was full for the weekend.

We drove 4 miles west to Loma. Here the trails were pretty much right off the highway and we would be able ride a loop. We opted for an easy ride - Rustler's Loop. It started with a 100' incline over 200 metres of sand and large stones - we decided we would be better to walk this part. The trail was about 2 ft wide with sand and rocks and twisted and turned for 4 miles. Oh, did I forget to mention the ledges and rocks we were supposed to jump up on and ride over? We were surprised how much energy it took to stay on the trail which was downhill for a good part of the ride. We enjoyed how scenic it was with the Colorado River beside us in spots as well as the Colorado National Monument and other mountains

Oct 17

We backtracked today to see the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. This 2500 ft gorge was carved out by the Gunnison River. We toured the north rim which had 6 scenic lookouts. The canyon did not disappoint….it was awe inspiring and very serene. The canyon walls were very dark, steep and narrow.

We drove the long scenic route of about 50 miles, up river to get to the south entrance to the canyon. The East Portal drive had countless switchbacks, a number of steep descents, and scenery including a reservoir which was over 15 miles long. At the south entrance we headed down a 16% grade to the bottom of the canyon, where we were able to walk along the river below the dam and in the canyon. At that point we were about 2000 ft straight down from the top of the canyon.

We were able to listen to the Jays game on the satellite ratio….they lost L