Montrose CO and Black Canyon

We departed Cummins in Grand Junction on Thursday morning August 29 after Cummins made a few final checks and we settled our latest bill.  The drive to Montrose was uneventful, for which we were grateful.  During the drive Dorcas received a series of texts, whose "dings" sound a lot like the ding when the "Check Engine" light comes on, which gave me quite a number of starts. 

Our original reservation at Meadows of San Juan RV Resort was for 8 nights, for which we would earn a discounted weekly rate.  But our repairs had whittled our stay down such that we only had 3 nights available to stay before we were scheduled to arrive in Moab on September 1, the day before the start of our Grand Circle caravan.  So it goes.  Meadows of San Juan was very gracious and credited us the unused portion of our deposit.

We had passed through Montrose during our trip in 2017 and I was looking forward to visiting again.  There are a lot of interesting things to see and do nearby: Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Ouray, Telluride, Gunnison and Silverton, to name a few.  But now we would have time to do only a few things.  It turns out, the road to Gunnison is blocked due to a recently closed bridge, and there was a large festival happening in Telluride, so that was no longer appealing.  We did however spend a day at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, just a few miles out of town.  Since we visited there in 2017, Black Canyon has been promoted from a National Monument to a National Park. 

From Wikipedia:

"The canyon's name owes itself to the fact that parts of the gorge only receive 33 minutes of sunlight a day.  Several canyons of the American West are longer and some are deeper, but none combines the depth, sheerness, narrowness, darkness, and dread of the Black Canyon."

Eddy out left behind that rock!

 I saw a sign in Montrose for a water park and found where they had created a section of rapids along the Uncompahgre River.  One guy was trying to teach another guy to surf in the river.  But the 2nd guy just wasn't getting it.  He never really got up on a wave.

We really didn't do much else in Montrose but rest and decompress from the stress of dealing with our repair issues.  I will say cool adult beverages were consumed.