Colorado Days: Highly Elevated

Two Days At Elevation Have Their Effects

Gunnison, Colorado, sits at about 7,700 feet above sea level, but I didn’t know that or even think about it when I first arrived. Then, my friend, Kurt, mentioned the fact and how people have trouble breathing here when they visit. He told me this while we were on a hike in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison (BCotG), so I couldn’t tell if I was breathing heavily because of the hiking or the elevation. However, later that night and all day today, I’ve felt the effects. Just walking around at a normal pace has me breathing abnormally. It’s a really strange experience.

Combining this physical wear and tear with the realization that my trip will be at an end on Saturday has psychologically brought me down quite a bit. It’s like when I have a long day of driving, something like six hours of pure driving time: The first five hours go by pretty easily, but when I get to that final hour and can see the end in sight, it’s just sort of a drag… but I guess that analogy is sort of the reverse of how I feel now. Anyway, what I’m trying to get across is that there’s definitely a part of me that kind of wants this trip to be over, so it’s going to take some effort to appreciate the experiences along the way.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

On Sunday afternoon, Kurt and I headed-out to see BCotG which is about an hour west of Gunnison. Its name comes from the fact that the canyon was formed by the Gunnison River and the idea that it’s so deep that the sun rarely reached the bottom. For the past three years, I’ve been seeing pictures of the BCotG on different Reddit boards, so I felt that I was overly-prepared for seeing it in-person, and, while it’s still a stunning place to see with your own eyes, I feel like I was correct. It might also be another bit of evidence that I’ve become jaded after seeing so much amazing stuff over the past month.

Kurt and I got in a hike that clung to the southern walls of the canyon. It was the first non-desert hike since Hot Springs, Arkansas, back in April. It was refreshing and reminded me of home. After the hike, we drove past a few more overlook points, the last of which was Dragon Point Overlook, named after the dragon-shaped veins along the northern side of the canyon.

Hanging-Out With Grimm and Miska

After visiting Gunnison, Kurt and I went-out to dinner and then headed back to his place to hang-out. He had to goto work the following morning, making it a chill evening. Kurt and his wife, Jen, have two dogs: Grimm and Miska. Grimm is Kurt’s boxer who I’ve watched grow-up on Facebook over the past nine years. No bullshit, meeting him in real life felt like meeting a movie star. It was really exciting. While I wasn’t as familiar with Miska, she was great fun to hang-out with as well. Naturally, I thought she was a husky, but Kurt corrected me and informed me that she’s a malamute. All I know is she has a nose that went straight for my butthole whenever I wasn’t paying attention.

Driving Over The Continental Divide

My original plan was to work on my blog post before leaving Gunnison, but I got good sleep and had the car packed by 8 AM, so I just went with it and headed for Estes Park, Colorado, which is just outside of Rocky Mountain National Park. There’s something about driving over the Continental Divide that bothers me and I wasn’t looking forward to it. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised by an easy, low-stress drive over and down the mountain range.

The part that I enjoyed the most was getting to Monarch Pass at the top of the divide. At 11,312 feet, I was really feeling the elevation (or my mind was making me feel it) as I browsed through the gift shop and walked around taking pictures of the area. It was a nice change from having to drive through a long, packed tunnel like I was expecting.

Rocky Mountain National Park

As I got close to Rocky Mountain National Park, I started wondering how they decided to designate a particular section of this massive area of impressive mountains a national park. The town of Estes Park lies just outside the park and you can get an idea of how this might have happened because the views of the towering, snow-capped mountains in the distance can take your breath away.

Unfortunately, by the time I made it to the park, I was really feeling down, worn-out and my back had suddenly tightened-up. There’s some depression in there, as well, because I can’t help but think of the mere handful of days I have left before returning to the drudgery of every day life. But, I did my best to check-out the areas of the park that the ranger said would be visit on a single day visit.

Most of the visit was spent simply driving through the park, which make me perfectly happy. Driving through these beautiful parks is really enough to make me happy. It might be getting pretty late into the spring because the park was busy and that never vibes with me. The hike the ranger suggested around Sprague Lake was a highly accessible, paved trail around a lake in a picnic area, so it was too congested for me to enjoy that much, but I did hide a stone along the way making it a doubly successful event.

Regrouping

On the way back to my motel, I stopped at a grocery store with the intention of buying some healthy food, but there were only two cashiers on duty and the lines were miles long, so I just headed back to the motel to unpack and eat what I have leftover from dinner last night. While working on my blog post, I put some effort into locating and reorganizing my things, which had become a big mess over the past week. Then, I got to prepping for the final days of my trip before bed.