Monday, September 11, 2000
Montrose & Grand Junction - Sept 11
We spent six days in Montrose at a lovely campground with a site right next to the Uncompahgre River. The bird activity was wonderful. We saw lots of Western Wood Peewees hunting insects along the river. We also saw Bullock's Oriole, Western Tanager, and Common Nighthawk.We spent a day at the South Rim of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We walked to all the overlooks and hiked several additional trails. One was especially enjoyable (& strenuous) because it went part way down into the canyon. We were there until dusk, and on our way out we saw a pair of Blue Grouse.
We spent another day at the North Rim of the Black Canyon. We started in Montrose, headed north to Delta, eastish to Crawford and then down a dirt road to the North Rim, back out and southeast on Colorado 92 thru Curecanti and back along US 50 to Montrose. It was a long and very scenic circle. The North Rim is quite lovely. Very few people take the time to drive that far, so you have lots of overlooks to yourself. The overlooks are steeper and the views are spectacular. At the campground, some of the sites are within sight of the canyon edge. Unfortunately, there are no sites large enough for our rig, but it is a beautiful campground nonetheless.
One other place of interest in Montrose was the Russell Stover Chocolate Factory -- with discount candy!! "Seconds" and old holiday stuff were sold at bargain prices. And we couldn't resist a couple of "grab bags". How can you go wrong when there's chocolate inside?
Next we headed for Grand Junction, where we stayed at Island Acres State Park, located about 10 miles east of GJ along I70. We were a little surprised at HOW CLOSE to I70 it was, but we got used to it after a few days and were even able to sleep with our windows open. There was a nature trail along the Colorado River which was quite pleasant to walk on.
While in GJ, we spent a day doing legal things, such as vehicle registration, getting new driver's licenses (we actually got decent photos for a change!), and voter registration. We are now "legal" GJ residents. We looked around the downtown section of GJ and found it quite appealing -- lots of interesting shops and an especially nice quilt store. We also found a GREAT used book store next to Wal-Mart named "Twice Upon a Time."
We spent one full day sightseeing on the Grand Mesa. We drove out to the Land's End visitor's center, which is located at the west end of the Grand Mesa -- you can see forever. We then drove to Cedaredge and saw a bit of the Pioneer Village, but only the outside as it was just closing when we arrived. We then took some back roads through a lot of NFS campgrounds to the town of Collbran. After the 90 degree heat of GJ, the 60 degrees of the Grand Mesa was wonderful. We saw a pair of Golden Eagles hunting. They would hover, stoop and dive, sometimes landing just a few feet from our truck. The sun was hitting them just right, and they truly looked golden.
We spent another day at the Colorado National Monument. It started out warm and sunny, but quickly turned quite stormy. We saw a spectacular lightning show while eating lunch in our truck. NPR was playing Beethoven's Eighth, suddenly lightning hit "just over the hill", and the translator went out. Later, when it had cleared and we were at another overlook, we could see all the translators located on that next hill. We did a little hiking and then walked out to all the overlooks along the 23-mile rim drive. It was beautiful, and we were sorry there wasn't more time for hiking other trails. While there, we finally noticed that the Titmouse we had been seeing everywhere was no longer the Tufted Titmouse but the Plain Titmouse (which still is tufted!), so we got another bird for our list.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 3:38 PM 
