Day 54 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Today we leave Colorado Springs CO and head into Kansas.  Didn’t take too many photos today, the spectacular scenery is behind us.   Here are a couple of photos between Colorado Springs CO and the Kansas State Line.

Crossed the line from Colorado into Kansas.

And now some photos between the Kansas State Line and our hotel in Hays KS.  Where are the mountains ?

We are heading South and East, our plan is to head for Afton Oklahoma on Route 66.
To see the few photos that we took today, you can click on the link to my FLICKR site.

Day 53 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip.

A day off…. We have reserved 2 nights at this hotel in Colorado Springs. Today I will try to get caught up with uploading the photos to Flickr. One thing that Utah hotels do not have is a good reliable high speed connection. One night I think that 2 tin cans and a piece of string would have transferred my photos quicker than the connection I had. Since we have been in Colorado, I have noticed a vast improvement In the wi-fi connection speeds at the hotels we are staying at.
Karen did laundry today and we ordered a pizza for delivery to our room for dinner.
We will be back on the road again tomorrow, heading South and East. Our plan is to get onto Route 66 and to visit some of the places that were closed on our Route 66 trip in 2008. We will also re-visit some of our favourite spots and people that we met 2 years ago.
Only 4 Photos taken today, the camera is having a well deserved day off.
Here they are,  first one is of me at my laptop plotting our route home from Colorado Springs.   The others are photos that Karen took outside the hotel.

Day 52 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip.

Today we will drive from Gunnison Colorado to Colorado Springs Colorado. A distance of about 300 KM.
We only took 56 photos today, far short from our usual 300 plus photos per day. The scenery is less spectacular, so I think this accounts for the drop in photos. Here are some of the photos that we took today.

The road we are travelling on has a 7% grade, feels like we are running level compared to that 16% grade a few days ago. There is a runaway truck lane ahead just in case a truckers brakes fail.

We are now driving on the Collegiate Peaks Scenic Byway… Here are more scenery photos as we drive along.


Our original plan for this afternoon was to go for a ride on the Pikes Peak Cog Railway, however when we arrived, the driving in the area around the railway station was a zoo, everyone was jostling for the few parking spots that there were and boarding time was 20 minutes away. It just all seemed too overwhelming to me, and I just wanted to get away from the madness. We will have to do further research and plan to come back for a ride in a less busy season.
We then went to visit and drive through the Garden of the Gods. This is a little park in Colorado Springs. We stopped at the visitor center to buy some postcards.

We saw Balanced Rock.

And a few other rockscapes.

But I guess to my eye and after seeing Monument Valley, Mexican Hat, Yosemite NP, Zion NP, Yellowstone NP… etc… I know it is unfair to compare those National Parks to this city park, but I was quickly losing interest and after making a wrong turn and not knowing which road to follow, we gave up and headed for our hotel in Colorado Springs CO.
We will be leaving Colorado in a couple of days and continuing our return Eastward towards home. We will be leaving the beauty of Utah, Nevada, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado behind us. As we travel East from here we won’t see much beauty in the landscape unless you like the flat prairies of Kansas and certainly after we cross over the Mississippi, we will be into all that urban sprawl of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ontario. We have made lots of notes and written down lots of places to return to, things to do and see on our next vacation to this part of the USA.
To see all of our photos from today, you can find them on my FLICKR site.

Day 51 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Today we will visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. This is the newest of the National Parks, Bill Clinton changed it from a National Monument to a National Park in 1999.

We entered the park and showed our park pass, then went to the Visitor Center.

At the visitor center is the first viewpoint of about 12 viewpoints along the South Rim Road.

Next was Pulpit Rock Overlook. It took 2 million years for the Gunnison River to carve these canyon walls. It is about 2000 feet to the bottom.

Devils Overlook.

Chasm View.

Painted Wall. This is the highest cliff in Colorado at 2300 ft. The patterns in the rock face were created more than a billion years ago when molten rock filled the fractures and joints in the existing rock, then cooled and hardened.

Dragon Point.

Sunset View.

High Point. This is the end of the road and we turn around and head back towards the visitor center.

From the visitor center we head out on the East Portal Road. This road will dead end in about 12 miles, but it promises to be a great drive. The sign says extreme grades and sharp curves.. sounds like fun. We have driven on steep grades before, but never as much as 16%

At the bottom of the road is the Gunnison Diversion Dam which was built to divert water from the river through a 5 mile tunnel through the mountain and out the other side to provide water for the fields and homes in the Uncompahgre Valley.

And a bit further along is the Crystal Dam. You can’t see too much because the area is fenced off.

We turned around and headed back to the top. Climbing the 16% grade was a bit of a chore for our car but we made it.

When we got back to the top, there were several cows in the road blocking our way.

We got onto US 50 and headed towards our hotel in Gunnison CO. US 50 passes through the Curecanti Recreational Area.

To see all of our photos from today, you can find them on my Flickr site.