Farther afield

If you head west out of town on 50 you get to the largest body of water in Colorado - the Blue Mesa Reservoir. It's the thrice-dammed Gunnison river which goes on to flow through the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, now a National Park.

Remember, we're west of the continental divide here, so rivers flow "down" to the west.


The picture was taken from a nifty little hike just off 50 to this chunk o' geology called the Dillon Pinnacles.

Now that I have geologists as colleagues, I am very nervous about mis-identifying geological features. Better to just be general.



If you keep going west you pass through the Curecanti National recreation area. You can hike down and take a boatride on one of the middle reservoirs. Locals, be warned - the Rangers will try to recruit you to their recreational ice hockey team. The canyon isn't particularly narrow or deep here, but it's still a lovely trip.






Farther west you can drive along the Southern rim and hop out and take a series of short hikes to overlooks. It's kind of like "hiking sprints" and winds up being much more of a workout than the distance would imply. We're at 8000 ft here...and I'm still not in particularly good shape. (Taking regular walks in the hills...good. Cooking for myself...bad.)








Here Mr. PotatoHead yawps westward into the canyon. The safety fence makes it look less impressive, but it was a very good yawp.

Incidently, only the Southern side of the canyon has overlooks with wimpy safety fences. On the Northern rim you can walk right up to the edge. You'd probably get some darn impressive pictures if you remember to bring your camera.

If I was a real potato head, I supposed I'd have a little divot in my side where the camera could be plugged in so I wouldn't forget it. Or would I have to pop out my eyeballs and stick in the camera (to mimic holding the camera up to take a picture)? Perhaps a better option would be replacing my glasses with the camera, because if I were going to have eyeballs that could be popped in and out I'd definitely spring for a 20/20 vision model.

Golly, this is a long post.
Perhaps I should go grade something now.