Mountains

So it turned out we did have excellent cell signal last night! Even though the park showed over 100 sites available, many of them were posted as one night only available. Turns out there is an astronomy festival here this weekend so half the sites can be reserved and therefore many are reserved starting Thursday night.

Yesterday’s highlight of the drive was a climb up through Monarch Pass which ends up peaking at about 11,700 ft in elevation. It is a popular ski area but also offers other outdoor recreational activities.

Arriving at Elk Creek Campground, Curecanti National Recreation Area, we drove around looking for a site and saw all the signs were for one night only. We talked with the campground host and found out we could go to the web reservation site and find the ones that were showing available Thursday night and reserve Thursday night on line and pay for the first night on site. We chose a site and set up and enjoyed our supper. We have a nice view of the Blue Mesa Reservoir from our dining table. Our elevation is about 7500’. A long way down from Monarch Pass!

After some rain during the night with temperatures down to 7 C, we decided to take a scenic drive on Thursday. Called the West Elk Loop, it will take us close to the Black Hills of the Gunnison National Park. However, we don’t plan on going into the park at this point and instead will catch it in about a week when we come at it from the other side. There have been 2 bridges under construction on Hwy 50 with restricted traffic and we weren’t sure how much traffic would be impacted.

Some areas of the loop were more interesting than others. The earlier part where we could see the black canyon was very scenic. We left that area and stopped in the small town of Crawford where we picked up a sandwich for lunch. The lady at the shop said the summer and fall are busy but winter and spring they are down to a population of just over 400. Not sure what the residents do then!

After lunch we went through the farming communities of Hotchkiss and Paonia. We saw grapes – there are about 10 wineries – and bought some local peaches. As we drove some of the streets in Paonia, we saw this beautiful church with a lot of stained glass

After we turned onto the county road towards Kebler Pass, the scenery was less dramatic. We were mostly on a hard-packed dirt road with some paved areas.

There had been some rain today but it was finished by the time we got to the wet roads. Only had a few sprinkles on the windshield. We never did see a sign when we got to Kebler Pass, and eventually we came out to the town of Crested Butte. They have a unique and pretty way of calming traffic!

At that point we headed south, back to Gunnison and Elk Creek Campground. Overall 270 km scenic drive.

Tomorrow is another drive day, but a scenic road to Lake City where we will spend 3 nights.