Have to lead in with a question here: How many of you have heard of Black Canyon of the Gunnison? Alright, how many of you know it’s a National Park? If you’re like us, you’ve only recently heard of this Colorado natural wonder. We decided to check it out with my brother’s family and friends while we were camping nearby with them. We’re glad we did.
This half-mile deep, narrow canyon runs for dozens of miles. We sampled views from the top of the canyon and ventured part way down the wall on a short hike.
While Shelly and I will remember this little-known park for its magnificence, our boys will likely think of it as the place they first became Junior Park Rangers. Completing the workbook sections appropriate for their ages, Baxter and Atticus were sworn in and received their first Junior Park Ranger badges.
Sadly saying bye to our Colorado family, we ventured on our own to the southwest corner of the state to visit Mesa Verde National Park.
Starting with a ranger-led tour of one of the largest cliff dwellings, we learned amazing facts about the people who inhabited the area some 700 years ago. Life expectancy in men was around 35 years, in women 23. The way the cliff dwellers got food and other supplies such as the stones with which they built their homes was by climbing down the rock face into the dwelling.
We were amazed by the amount of effort the people put into constructing various dwellings. The boys and we agree that we’re fortunate to have life as easy as we do (and that both parents have outlived the life-expectancy of the natives).
Packing up the trailer, we decided to take a detour through Four Corners Monument on our way to Utah. Though ultimately disappointing in the commercial nature of this attraction, the boys were thoroughly amused that we let them go “ahead of us” unchaperoned to both Arizona and Utah!
And then there’s Moab. What a beautiful area! First stop: Arches National Park.
The scenery from the car kept us mesmerized, but hiking to a few of the park’s 2300 arches brought a more meaningful connection to these windows in time.
It also enabled completion of the field portion of the Junior Park Ranger booklets.
Though our focus is on national parks, we’re dropping in on other points of interest along the way. The jaunt to Dead Horse Point State Park was richly rewarding [more on this park in a later post].
Our final park visit in Moab was to Canyonlands National Park. Equally excellent for rock-hopping and jaw-dropping.
Despite temperatures topping 100 degrees, the number of beautiful things to see and fun things to do make Moab, Utah a likely repeat destination for our family.
In addition to many national parks, the Park Service runs many national monuments throughout the country. Before leaving Utah, we set our sites on Dinosaur National Monument where we found, as you might expect, fascinating dinosaur remains.
Recently redone, the monument’s visitor’s center and main exhibit at the Carnegie Quarry were top-notch. We were floored to find hundreds of dinosaur fossils exposed in the rock just as they had frozen in time 150 million years ago. This single site in Jensen, UT has produced hundreds of the world’s fossilized dinosaur skeletons. Being able to touch the fossils brings out the imagination in us.
Dinosaur National Monument highlights some of the area’s more modern inhabitants with information and preserved petroglyphs from only 1000 years ago.
In case you got confused by our detours, it’s important for me to keep score for you. We’re now up to 5 Junior Park Ranger badges for each boy (one at each of the four national parks, and one at the national monument).
More things to see, learn, and do. We’re only halfway through our first of three months touring the public lands of our western states. Tomorrow we hitch up again and ride on to new sites.
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