As has been typical as of late, we didn’t get up until pretty late. We got out of the motel about noon, and headed back to the pub for lunch. After some more onion rings and a salad, we headed out of town. Going south, we took hwy 133. Another wonderful road, this one curved up and down mountains and followed a winding river for a long ways. The only downer was that it was once again insanely HOT. I know, enough complaining about that… At 92, we choose to cut over to Delta and just freeway it down to Montrose, and then east on 50 to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument. Normally, we would have probably chosen the windier small back way down 92 towards the east, but it was just so hot, the hour saved seemed more important today…
Anyway, we made it to the monument in the late afternoon, and checked out the views and the visitor center. Unfortunately, we forgot the camera when hiking down to the viewpoint… After checking out the upper campground and not being too excited about it, we headed down the tight, steep (16% grade) road to the lower campground by the river. This campground was really cool, only 15 sites, but plenty of room. Trailers and vehicles over 22 feet aren't allowed down the hill, so it was only us tent camping types.
The river was great, the sun setting over the canyon was incredible. We found a great little place right by the campground to do some fishing, in a wide calm spot between two sets of rapids. The fish were jumping all over the place, and both Janet and I had bites, but after an hour or so, no fish. It was getting dark, and we needed to get back to camp to cook dinner, so we decided just five more casts each. On my first cast, I caught one!! It was so exciting about a 10-12" trout. That of course was the easy part, I have no idea what to do now!
Fortunately, Janet's summers spent working on her Uncle's fishing boat in Alaska taught her how to clean Salmon. Granted, a trout is much smaller, but the basics are the same. She could describe what to do, and I could do it. Dinner was great :-) and I don’t just mean great in the sense of eating a fish I caught, it actually tasted really great! We were both really surprised. We of course had no butter or lemon or anything, but it didn’t need it. After filling the campsite and our clothes with fish smell, we were very glad that we were out of bear country.
By this time it was really late, so after dinner we just went to bed. Tomorrow we plan on riding down US550 (the Million Dollar Highway) to Durango.
later,
david.
Get your own Free Home Page