A day full of sites and adventures!

DAY 4 - We awoke Monday morning to a beautiful Colorado morning in Buena Vista (see picture). A gorgeous sunrise at 6am, a cool 40 degrees, a bear paw print on our window...that's right, A BEAR PAW PRINT ON OUR WINDOW!!! We quickly realized that a thin sheet of glass was all that kept us warm and safe in Hotel Jimmy and seperated us from being ripped apart by a bear. Hmmm...how about some morning prayers? I think so....

We fueled up, got some coffee and headed up Cottonwood Pass on our way out of Buena Vista and heading toward the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. As we ascend the mountain, we watch the temperature drop until it finally bottoms out at a crisp 24 degrees!! (You may wonder how we see the temp drop, but the Jimmy has a digital thermometer) Now, remember, we started at 45 degrees...and it was 90 degrees in Kansas...so we have seen a temperature change of about 66 degrees in less than two days. We are 2 miles above sea level and there is 6 feet of ice and snow on either side of the road. (See picture of Jenn on top of snow) At the very top of the mountain we realize that we are at the Continental Divide! On one side of us, all the ice that melts flows into the Pacific, and on the other, it flows into the Atlantic.

Marj had told us about the road that were marked "unpaved roads" and "other roads" on the map...but we had yet to experience those. Now was the time. As we stood there looking out over God's beauty, we also looked down a dirt road that had no railings and could easily lead to disaster if you are not too careful. More prayers? You got it! We headed down this road and tested out the brakes quite a bit (I think maybe we finally broke them in...hahaha). Jenn enjoyed the breathtaking scenery as Chase white-knuckled the steering wheel and listened to her descriptions of the surroundings. We have included some pictures of those surroundings as well...

After our harrowing adventuring down the mountain, which ended up taking us 90 minutes to go about 20 miles, we arrived at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Ahhh, our first use of the National Parks Pass (which got us in free) and the second stamp in our passport! Yeah, we are nerds. This natural wonder was formed over 2 million years ago by a volcanic eruption that met with the Gunnison river. Because of its hard igneous rock and slow moving water, it takes close to a century for it to erode just one inch! We peered into the gaping chasm many, many times and discovered that once you've seen one part of the Black Canyon, you have seen it all. There are only so many pegmatite dikes that one can stand. :-) One thing that did catch our eye, though, are the lunatics that decided that they wanted to spend their Memorial Day weekend trying to climb up the sheer face of this canyon. Thanks to our Mennonite friends with the binoculars, we were able to get a good look at a couple of these people, who apparently sleep on those rocks as well.

We left the Black Canyon and headed 30 miles Southwest to a little town called Ouray. This is Jenn's favorite place in Colorado! We took a break from Hotel Jimmy and decided to stay at the wonderful Ouray Hotel which is managed by the same cool guy that was here 5 years before when Jenn visited named Dale. Google it, check it out, it's a cute little place to stay and it's not expensive at all! We walked up and down the main street and stopped to have ourselves a free-range organic hamburger and a buffalo burger (we had to get one while we could you know) at the Goldbelt and then got some fudge at the Ouray Candy Shop. We went back to the hotel and spent the night writing out our postcards, typing up these blog entries, and just resting up for the final leg of our trip.