The Road to the Grand Canyon

It is a long drive from Denver to the Grand Canyon.  Even longer as we did not take the fastest route.  Our trip took us through Gunnison, CO so I could drop my daughter at college on the way back.

The drive from Denver to Gunnison will take you through the South Park region.  (Not the fictional town, but the part of Colorado it is named after.) I've done this trip several time and I always enjoy it.  It is beautiful, green and expansive.  (Expansive is a word I'll use again I'm sure.)

You climb out of South Park over Monarch Pass and then down into the Gunnison Basin. The town of Gunnison is a combination mountain / college town surrounded by lovely, mostly unspoiled nature.

Traveling southwest from Gunnison takes us by the Blue Mesa Reservoir and past Black Canyon of the Gunnison, where the Gunnison River carves a stunning canyon.  The canyon is a hidden gem, well worth spending a few hours.

At this point we are maybe a quarter of the way through our journey.  Up next in our trip is to traverse the San Juan mountains via the San Juan Skyway.  A lovely road with flowing curves and stunning scenery.  A real drivers road.

Coming out of the San Juans finds a short drive through common rural western U.S. when the scenery takes a drastic turn as we move into the Ute and Navajo lands.

These lands are beautiful, expansive and a hard place to make a life.  Scrub brush, dry soil, clear skies.  Acres and acres of rock pretending to be soil.  And an electric railway.

It was a loooong drive.  But it wasn't boring.

Be good, have fun,

Jon.

Bonus Track:

Rock Band was one of the most immerse music games ever created.  I played hours and hours of it with my family.  Well, it's coming back.  This song was the hardest of the previous generation.