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As busy summer turned to less frenetic fall, the road beckoned me and I was off on a tramp. My wandering brought me to Great Sand Dunes National Park (first eight photos above) and Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in Colorado. Last year Gary and Phyllis took us to the Dunes Park when we visited them in Red River. Until then I didn’t know it existed. Our visit was little more than a drive by and I wanted to go back and do a little exploring, which I did. I didn’t do the park justice but I did scramble up the dunes which would have tuckered out better men than me. Spending the night there, I got to try out for the first time the tent I bought. It is designed to go on the back end of an SUV such as the Pathfinder, with the rear door up. When I camped out in the Pathfinder last year in Big Bend, I found the back of the Pathfinder a little cramped. When I found this SUV tent, I thought it might give me just enough extra room so I could stretch out. It did, but the wind got up during the night and made me think I’d made a mistake. I backed into my space in the campground so the vehicle rear end wasn’t facing other campers. The afternoon and evening were calm but the wind picked up during the night. The prevailing south winds form the dunes as they blow sand up the San Luis valley and dump it when they encounter the little Sangre De Cristo mountains cul de sac. My tent was facing the mountains but the wind kicked up out of the east blasting down the mountain side directly at the tent. I probably didn’t secure the bottom part of the tent that goes under the rear bumper as well as I should have and the wind, which didn’t blow steadily but came in terrific gusts, would pull the tent bottom up and join me. I could have tolerated the wind whipping around the inside of the Pathfinder, snug as I was in my sleeping bag, but the loosened tent flapped around all to be damned creating a lot of noise and I finally had to get up, take the tent down and button up in the cramped Pathfinder. I had no such problem on the next three nights, though, and found that the tent performed as I had hoped. It also allowed me to get better ventilation when I tied back the solid outer flaps and just zipped up the inner mesh insect screen.
As I said, I didn’t do the Dunes Park justice. There were several areas accessible with a 4-wheel drive vehicle I would have liked to explore, but I wanted to get on to the Black Canyon so I left those for another day. The Black Canyon is appropriately named, in my opinion. The dark rock, gneiss and schist with some pink pegmatite streaked through it, is charcoal gray, which becomes black when the shadows cover and, because the gorge is so narrow, that’s most of the time. The information on the gorge says that it is as much as 2,300 feet deep and only 40 feet wide at its narrowest. A road with a dozen pullouts for viewing the canyon runs down the south rim. I spent the better part of a day going from view to view. These typically required a walk of 100 to 300 yards along good paths and, taken all together, offered about as intimate a connection with the gorge as one could hope for.
After taking the scenic south rim road and seeing the sights, I headed down to the east portal to spend the night. That campground is down at the river level and the road in and out of it is pretty steep. No problem but it was slow going. I found the bottom of the gorge warmer and infested with flies and somewhat regretted my decision to spend the night there. It cooled down nicely in the evening, though, and with the cooler temperature the flies were less active.
After breakfast I loaded up and headed for the north rim. There is a ranger station there and a campground. Not as many visitors come to the north side but there were plenty of people in the campground. There is a scenic drive along a gravel road and a couple of hiking trails, one middling and one longer. I opted for the middling trail. It was a warm afternoon and three miles felt about right. The longer trail is six miles, more that I felt like tackling at the time. It was interesting to me that some 50 yards from the campground there was a nature trail area with a railing where I could look down into the gorge. By leaning over the railing, I could look straight down to the river some 2,000 feet below. In other places there were no railings so it wasn’t a place where one would want to wander around in the dark looking for a restroom.
The aspens were showing out along the route to Black Canyon and seemed to become more colorful as the week went on. Even the cotton woods and Gambel oaks got into the act. As I drove down winding highway 92 from the south rim on my way home Friday morning, I was treated to a lot of and even passed through some aspen groves. One in particular, the biggest, was spectacular in the golden morning sun just peeking over the mountain. I didn’t take a picture, though. There was no where to turn off the road and I don’t know how a camera could capture what it was like to be in the natural cathedral of golden leaves and light.