Wednesday June 4, 2014

 

Non-Travel Day

 

It is another beautiful sunny and warm morning . We headed west to the charming town of Fruita and the entrance to the “Colorado National Monument”. The Colorado National Monument rises over 2,000 feet above the Grand Valley of the Colorado River preserves a fantastic landscape of canyons and plateaus. The road through the park is about 30 miles in length and takes you from the valley floor up steep inclines and around tight turns revealing at every turn fantastic views of the rock formations. The area is a geologist playground with all of the formations and types of rock within the park. Over millions of years the upheaval of the from the Redlands Fault pushed the rock up creating the mountains, and then over subsequent millions of years the actions of the Colorado river and the various tributaries along with erosion and glacial action created the vista that we have today. We spent the entire day traversing the park stopping at most of the overlooks and taking several short hikes, and like hikes in previous parks the altitude had a dramatic negative effect on the length of the hikes. The Colorado National Monument is definitely a place not to be missed.