Days 15 & 16. To Gunnison & the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

Thankfully the weather is straightening itself out a bit and we have had 2 lovely days. Yesterday we left Manitou Springs and had a beautiful ride along some of the back roads to reach Gunnison.
We had a nice picnic lunch overlooking the collegiate mountains.

We arrived at our lovely Motel on the outskirts of Gunnison and made ourselves at home.
Today, we had a more leisurely start which is just as well because it was quite chilly first thing. Our destination was The Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park. We rode past the Blue Mesa Reservoir to get to the park.

We arrived at the park and took the south rim drive which had plenty of scenic pull outs where we could gaze at the canyon.

The canyon was carved into hard rock by the Gunnison River.

The canyon's name owes itself to the fact that parts of the gorge only receive 33 minutes of sunlight a day.

This is the painted wall, so called because of the visible strata

We had a pleasant picnic and took a short hike to round off our day.

We're loving life in Colorado!