Curecanti and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison

We spent three nights camping just above the Black Mesa Reservoir in Curecanti National Recreation Area.  On our first full day, we explored Crested Butte and partook in one of the most magnificent hikes ever.  On the second day we decided to stick closer to home and explore the surreal landscape of Curecanti.  Although not far from the prototypical Colorado mountains, Curecanti is a beguiling landscape of desert plants, mesas, reds, oranges, and a large blue pool of water that looks just as out-of-place as it is.  The juxtaposition is right out of a storybook or a fantasy movie.  What was once an arid area with a fertile valley where the Gunnison River once ran is now a boaters’ paradise.

Blue Mesa Reservoir in Curecanti

Blue Mesa Reservoir in Curecanti

Blue Mesa Reservoir in Curecanti

Blue Mesa Reservoir in Curecanti

We began our exploration with a several mile hike to the Dillon Pinnacles.  It was a beautiful day and the trail was deserted.  It appears that almost everyone that frequents this park does so with a boat and/or the inclination to get on the water.  That leaves the trails blissfully empty.  As we were hiking to the scent of sage and eventually pine, I was checking out the footprints of the hikers that came before us.  Apparently, many deer like to hike the trail, as well as a few people.  When we were almost to the turn-around point, Van started making his cat noise.  He almost never makes his cat noise unless he sees a cat, so we immediately start asking him if he saw one.  A cat out here on this deserted trail almost assuredly means one thing – a mountain lion.  They’re not frequently seen, but Van has a way of spotting things that is uncanny.  I often think he should be a tracker when he gets older.

As two-year olds tend to do, he will not answer our question about whether he saw a cat.  I’m not sure we’d believe him one way or another anyways.  So, we continue down the path amongst the pines and the pinnacles until I look down and see the unmistakable print of a large cat.  We’ll never know if Van actually saw a mountain lion or if he was just making sounds for fun, but we knew that it was time to turn around and not find out for ourselves.  On the return leg of the hike, Alan commented on how much faster of a hiker I am with the threat of a mountain lion in the vicinity.

Dillon Pinnacles in Curecanti

Dillon Pinnacles in Curecanti

View of the Blue Mesa Reservoir from our Hike

View of the Blue Mesa Reservoir from our Hike

After a morning in the full sun and a sprinkling of adrenaline, we found a rare shaded picnic spot, right next to the boat inspection station.  Van was in heaven.  He loves boats, so to get to watch boat after boat pull up while he ate lunch was a real treat.  We spent the afternoon hiking down into a narrow canyon and along the water, and then later, playing along the shore of the Blue Mesa Reservoir.  We, however, did not get decked out in white mud like the gentleman we saw making an escape through the grasses.

Nope, not a ghost, just a man fully clad in white mud

Nope, not a ghost, just a man fully clad in white mud

Cooling Off in the Blue Mesa Reservoir

Cooling Off in the Blue Mesa Reservoir

 

Our last and final day in the area was spent in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  It’s hard to see in photos, but this canyon is DEEP and narrow.  We couldn’t even get a good gauge of how deep it was when we were looking right into it.  I was shocked to learn, as I teetered on the edge of the deepest portion, that the Empire State Building would only come up halfway.  We hiked around the rim a bit and marveled at the sheer drops and the beautiful cliffs, before heading off to find our next camping spot.  This turned out to be a bit more difficult than we anticipated, but we eventually found a great (but not cheap) spot in Ridgway State Park.  It’s in an ideal location, centrally located so that we could explore Telluride and Ouray on different days without having to pack up camp.  More on our fun in those locations in a future post…

On the Road to Shangri-La

And off we are, once again, with the open road before us and no home awaiting our return.  We drove west from Denver, heading over the Independence Pass to check out Aspen.  The drive over the pass and to Aspen was gorgeous and looked to be a hiker’s paradise.  If we were planning to stay in the area for the night (we weren’t), we definitely would have checked out a couple of the trails in the area.

The View from Independence Pass

The View from Independence Pass

Instead, we headed to downtown Aspen to find a spot to picnic and check out the town.  Alan predicted I wouldn’t think much of Aspen.  He was right.  So on we drove to Carbondale, a town we visited briefly a few weeks earlier.  As we got out of our car, we heard the not-so-distant sounds of a funk band.  Following the music through some backyards and alleyways, we found our way to a park with a large playground for Van.  He played and played and clearly got over his temporary fear of slides while we listened to the funk band warm up for the evening’s concert.  After Van was thoroughly played out, we walked out of the park between a heated croquet game and about fifty or sixty folks doing yoga.  It turns out you don’t need to cut through backyards and alleyways to get to the park, so we took a much more direct way to the main street and did a little wandering before getting back in our car.

Our original plan was to camp for a night just south of Carbondale, but given Van’s mood (it was good), and where we wanted to get the next day, we decided to make today a long driving day and just drive all the way to Curecanti.  We arrived just before the sun was setting, set up a quick camp, and feasted on a smorgasborg of hard-boiled eggs, cheese, crackers, and raisins.  Living the high life, I know!  The campground left some things to be desired for tenters, but it was practically deserted and overlooked the Blue Mesa Reservoir, so we couldn’t complain.

After our first of three nights in Curecanti, we hit the road to check out Crested Butte.  How do I describe this area in a blog post?  Shangri-La comes closest, but it’s hard to describe in words or in pictures – you kind of just have to go there.  The day after we were in Crested Butte we met a family who had been there the same day as us.  As we were sharing our stories of the hikes that we each took, our new friend told us that if she had seen a unicorn, she wouldn’t have been surprised.  This, my friends, is the perfect description of Crested Butte.  Crested Butte: the native habitat for the elusive unicorn.

The Hills Just South of Crested Butte

The Hills Just South of Crested Butte

On the Road to Crested Butte

On the Road to Crested Butte

We started our day in Crested Butte hiking along a river, through wildflower meadows, and up a hill to aspen groves.  Every few steps I proclaimed this to be the most beautiful hike I had ever taken.  And then it would proceed to get more beautiful.  This is the Colorado of postcards and magazine advertisements.  I wanted the hike to go on forever.  But, as all things naturally come to a conclusion, so did our hike.  But not before we waded into the river to a gravel bar in the middle to play and eat lunch.  It was a perfect morning.

We spent the afternoon poking around town and checking out the library, both to entertain Van and to read up on how to change the light that went out on our car just hours after leaving Denver.  The town did not disappoint.  The people were friendly, the architecture was perfect for the location, and the sun was shining.  Now I just need to find someone who has a vacation home in the area and needs a caretaker.

Blog Updates

I’m so happy that there are folks out there following along on our journey!  Since I’m now getting an audience beyond friends and family (!), I’ve made a few updates to the blog over the past couple of weeks.  If you haven’t yet had a chance, check out the updated “Our Route” page and the new “About Me” and “Links” pages.  Also, if you’re not already receiving copies of my new blog posts via email and you’d like to, you can sign up by just entering your email address under the heading: Follow Our Journey via Email, which is on the right side of the page.

One more thing before I go, my blog was recently added to the many great family traveling blogs on www.familiesontheroad.com.  If you’re interested in checking out other families doing something similar, there are many great blogs listed on the site.

From the Mountains to the Semi-Desert

The only thing that made me excited to leave Rocky Mountain National Park was our plans to visit our friends in the Breckenridge area (Silverthorne to be exact).  We had seen Rebekah and her son Rhyer this past Thanksgiving, but before that she and I had not seen each other since college!  Even though it had been so long since we’d spent any meaningful time together, within minutes it felt as if no time had passed.  Those are the best kinds of friendships!  Van had a blast playing with Rhyer.  He basically became a parrot, mimicking everything that Rhyer (who is a couple of years older) would do.  This was a huge benefit when it came to eating.  Van was keen to skip breakfast so that he could get extra time with the toys, but after seeing Rhyer eating a nectarine, it took no convincing to get Van to follow suit.  Healthy eating for the win!

On our first afternoon with Rebekah, we headed up to the nearby town of Leadville, which just so happens to be the highest incorporated town in the country.  As we were wandering around town and checking out her old stomping grounds, she thought it’d be a treat for Van to see the fire station.  Since she knows several of the local firefighters, we were able to take Van on a grand tour of all of the fire and rescue trucks.  And these are no ordinary fire trucks.  These firefighters cover a huge, mountainous area and face building as well as forest fires.   Their trucks were massive!  We finished the day feeding fish at the fish hatchery, grabbing a great dinner in Leadville, and staying up late and chatting over glasses of wine.  A perfect day!

Downtown Leadville

Downtown Leadville

Manning the Leadville firetrucks

Manning the Leadville firetrucks

The next morning, Rebekah and Rhyer took us to Cataract Lake, a fantastic hiking spot in the Eagles Nest Wilderness Area.  It was a perfect hike for kids – not too difficult but not too easy.  Van wound up walking about half of it and being carried the rest of the way on Alan’s back.  The hike was around a lake and to an impressive waterfall with a small wooden bridge over the rushing water.  The views were insane (no filters or adjustments of the photos below – it was that beautiful), but the coolest part was how the trail passed through several different types of environments.  The number of changes in scenery, plant life, smells, and colors were pretty remarkable for a trail less than three miles long.  This would be the kind of trail you could keep coming back to during different seasons and not get bored.

Hiking with Rhyer and Rebekah

Hiking with Rhyer and Rebekah

Aspens

Aspens

Cataract Lake

Cataract Lake

After an afternoon and evening of more fun, great food, and even better conversation, we woke up and struck out for Breckenridge.  We spent the morning wandering around, eating crepes, and stocking up on food for the next few days before saying our goodbyes.  THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING REBEKAH AND RHYER!!!

We continued westward, headed for Colorado National Monument.  We decided to overshoot the park and first check out Rabbit Valley, a beautiful and completely deserted area along the Utah border.  We could have camped there for free, but we decided to opt for a campground with water where we wouldn’t be so far away from anyone else.  We made our way to Colorado National Monument and set up camp for the next couple of days in a beautiful spot up on a cliff overlooking the town of Fruita.

Rabbit Valley, near the Colorado/Utah border

Rabbit Valley, near the Colorado/Utah border

Colorado National Monument

Colorado National Monument

Now that we are out of the mountains and into the semi-desert, the weather has changed dramatically.  The sun had us up and out of the tent by 6am and on the hiking trails by 7.  We were able to get some beautiful hikes in each day before it got too hot, and then proceeded to do some exploration by car in the middle of the day with stops for water play and ice cream in Grand Junction and a shaded picnic in Palisade.  Across the valley from CNM were the Book Cliffs, so named because the edges of the buttes appear similar to a shelf of books.   Though they lacked the punch of the rock formations in Colorado National Monument, I found them strange, beautiful, and all the more compelling.

Exploring

Exploring

Posing

Posing

The Book Cliffs

The Book Cliffs

The Book Cliffs

The Book Cliffs

We capped off our trip with an afternoon wandering around and picnicking in Glenwood Springs on our way back to the Denver area.  We also swung through Carbondale during Van’s nap and vowed to come back and check it out again when we’d have time to explore.  I was instantly taken by how it was situated, between towering mountains still covered in snow in one direction and red rock cliffs in another.  Those are views I could get used to!

The Bottling Process: Traveling with a Toddler (part 1)

Over the past several months, several of you have asked me for more details about the logistics of our travels.  This is the second post in an ongoing series about how we travel.  If there’s something you want to know more about, feel free to leave me a comment and perhaps it will be a topic for a future Bottling Process post.

When I read about other folks traveling around the country like us, most of them don’t have children.  Don’t get me wrong, there are tons of families on the road (just check out www.familiesontheroad.com for a taste), but it seems the vast majority are traveling either before having children or after their children are grown and have flown the coop.  And sometimes I get jealous when I read about all of the exciting things these childless travelers are getting to experience.  Traveling with a child, a toddler no less, changes things.  But for all of the things that we’re missing out on, we gain so much by experiencing this journey with a two-year old child full of wonder and silliness (even with his unending poo and periodic tantrums).  Here are a few things that have made living on the road with a toddler a little easier and a lot more fun:

  • Giving him a job at the campsite.  We inadvertently stumbled into the best tactic for giving us the time to set up the campsite while Van is not underfoot and also not getting into trouble. At one of our earliest camping spots on this trip, we asked Van to collect sticks and put them in the fire ring. Little did we know that he’d be such a committed gatherer that he’d amass a serious amount of wood for our fire. And he keeps doing it – every single night we camp – without being asked. He’s busy, we can set up the tent and make dinner, and we can have a nice fire after dinner. It’s a win, win, win!
  • Membership to a science or children’s museum.  When my mother was asking for birthday gift suggestions for Van, knowing that we’d be traveling and not wanting to get him something large or unnecessary for our travels, I suggested that she get him (and us) a membership to a children’s or science museum.  Many science and children’s museums provide reciprocity at other museums around the country, allowing members to get in for half price or even for free.  Since we are not going to be in one place this year, there was not an obvious museum at which we should become members.  I did some research and found a museum (The Boonshoft Museum of Discovery in Dayton, Ohio) that not only provided reciprocity for one of these types of museums, it provided reciprocity at over 300 science and technology museums, almost 200 children’s museums, and almost 200 zoos and aquariums.  Amazing!  We’ve had the opportunity to visit the Explorium in Lexington, Kentucky, the Adventure Science Center in Nashville, Tennessee, the Children’s Museum of Denver, and the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  And we have a long list of museums we’re excited to check out in the months to come.  In addition to giving us the opportunity to visit a number of museums of interest to us at a reduced cost or for free, visiting these types of museums is great for rainy days, hot and humid days, or days when Van desperately needs some kid time after too many activities that are more exciting to his mommy and daddy.
Water Fun at the Explorium in Lexington, Kentucky

Water Fun at the Explorium in Lexington, Kentucky

  • Libraries.  I am a huge fan of libraries – I worked at a library all through high school, we’ve planned this journey largely from library books, and we regularly frequented our local library before we began traveling.  But, as great as libraries are for local residents, they are just as great (if not better) for traveling families.  Van LOVES books, but we can’t bring too many with us given our lack of space.  Solution? Regular trips to the library!  But, not only do many libraries have a great selection of children’s books, more and more libraries also have a play area stocked with different toys – puppets, blocks, magnets, coloring pages and crayons, kitchens, play theaters, you name it!  And while Van’s busy playing and reading, we can check our email and our update the blog thanks to free wi-fi in many (but not all) libraries.  And you can’t take the clean bathrooms and running water for granted, either.
  • Making our own meals.  I imagine most folks traveling the country on a long-term basis make most of their own meals for cost and comfort reasons, but there are additional benefits when it comes to traveling with kids.  Kids can only sit still for so long and so often.  By making most of our meals on the road, in addition to minimizing cost, we minimize the time Van is stuck in a high chair at a restaurant and save those times for local places we’re itching to try (like hot chicken in Nashville or bbq in Memphis).  We’ve yet to eat out for breakfast and we rarely eat out for dinner.  That tends to happen when it’s been a long day, it’s getting late, and we’re famished, usually with no groceries to our name.  While we also make the vast majority of lunches (picnics across America should be our trip’s tagline), lunch is our meal of choice to go out.  When we’re not eating out for lunch (which is most of the time) we also get to see a different side of a place, since we typically eat our picnic lunch in a town square or other downtown green space when we’re not out on a trail.  Since he spends a bit more time in the car, this additional outdoor time is always welcome and lunch almost always concludes with time to explore. Plus, if you haven’t noticed, kids’ menus pretty much stink.  Seriously stink.  It’s a rare day when we order off of it.  He’s still got a small enough tummy that he can usually just share with us, or we’ll order him a small plate of something similar to what we’re eating.  I refuse to order him chicken strips and fries every single time we take him to a restaurant.  Once in a while, fine.  But why is every single kids’ menu the exact same, no matter where you go?  But I digress…  Even though we’re on a long-term trip, I’ve found that making most of our own meals is a great money and time saver on shorter trips, as well.  However, ignore this advice if you travel to Charleston, South Carolina, in which case you should eat out at least four times a day, every day, and mail me your leftovers.
Our trusty camp stove, the source of most of our yummy dinners

Our trusty camp stove, the source of most of our yummy dinners

No, this is not what I mean by picnic, cheerios do not make a meal (said no child, ever)

No, this is not what I mean by picnic, cheerios do not make a meal (said no child, ever)