Megan’s Take
We had another busy day in the Grand Junction area today. We started at Colorado National Monument so that we could hike the trails before the heat was too intense. We hiked the rim trail,
Otto’s trail,
and the coke ovens trail,
totaling 2.5-3 miles. The kids must have slept well last night because they had a lot of pep and did pretty well on the trails. We even gave them the option to relax at the overlooks while Phil and I took turns getting out to see the views, but they wanted to join us. They particularly liked any opportunity to play on rocks.
We managed to get Emmett to nap for an hour in the truck after our hiking and then went rock hunting at Clifton Nature Park along the Colorado River in Grand Junction. There was a wide exposed rock bar where we found all kinds of rocks – sandstone, granite, agate, quartz etc.
I’m sure we’ll sort through to identify later. I had fun picking out rocks that were colorful, or extra smooth, or extra round, or had cool stripes and patterns. Emmett found a couple rocks that looked like cellphones, and Emilia looked for “food” rocks – looks like a pancake, a raspberry, an egg etc. Phil looked for rocks that were interesting to him but I’m not sure what his search criteria were.
He told me afterwards that I’m reaching my limit on rocks to bring home.
The last big stop of the day was Enstrom Candies in downtown Grand Junction for ice cream. According to Google, Enstrom is a Colorado-based company known for its handcrafted almond toffee, a family recipe passed down through generations. We were at their factory/headquarters where you can see into the candy kitchen from the cafe, although the candy-making was done for the day by the time we arrived. I can’t eat almonds but bought some of their nut-free butter toffee to enjoy later, and Emilia had a tantrum because we wouldn’t buy her buttered popcorn flavored Jelly Bellies from their shop. Such is life and travel with young children.
Phil’s Take
A good portion of the first part of Colorado National Monument is overlooking portions of Monument Canyon, with notable sights as the Pipe Organ
and Independence Monument, which shows up in several views because it’s right in the middle..
The Grand View overlook gives a great panorama of this canyon.
This is by far the most expansive view in the park, as this is the widest canyon here. It is reminiscent of many parks we’ve seen with similar features, but they are beautiful in their own way.
After the Grand View and Monument Canyon overlooks, the remaining views of this canyon is from the Coke Ovens Overlook,
the Coke Ovens themselves,
and the Artists Point, which is just above the Coke Ovens to the east.
While we were at the Coke Ovens at the end of the namesake trail, the kids enjoyed playing in the cave, and it took some convincing to get them to leave. They are very happy to just use their imaginations at these kinds of places now. Somewhere here was a house, grocery store, and some grocery shopping.
I do think the Grand View Overlook offers the best view of everything, even though you can’t see the Coke Ovens and that whole portion of the canyon.
The next few stops view portions of Ute Canyon, starting with the Upper Ute Canyon Overlook,
followed by the Fallen Rock Overlook,
and ending with the Ute Canyon View.
This overlook offered us what both Megan and I agreed was probably the prettiest view in the park. It’s the view down the canyon that does it, and this was the shot chosen as the featured image at the top of this post. The view up the canyon isn’t bad either, though it isn’t as direct of a shot.
Next was the only overlook of Red Canyon at Red Canyon Overlook, which gives an awesome shot down the entire length of that straight canyon.
The final overlook we stopped at was the Cold Shivers Point. It gave us this panorama view.
We ended up staying here for a bit for the kids to play, because their imaginations were running overtime and they seemed to have a lot of pep from eating their lunch. I wasn’t paying too close attention as Megan and I were having our own conversation, but I think somewhere here was a truck they were driving.
The rest of Colorado National Monument was the drive down the several switchbacks through the north end of No Thoroughfare Canyon, which gave us shots like this.
Unlike the rest of the park, you can see here how the rock is slanted (the picture was taken with the camera level), where it must be at the end of the fault that formed much of this park. Several hundred feet of massive rock completely skewed like this gives an idea to the sheer scale and force at which these things happen.
As for my rock searching criteria, I was just looking for stuff that didn’t look like everything else, which is a bit of an abstract kind of goal in a place like a river bank. There was a ton of granite and sandstone there, which all tend to have similar texture and look to the same kinds of rock, so there was a benchmark to compare against. I noticed some rock had bigger crystals or were mixtures of things like red and black, which I’m assuming was basalt or some other very old rock mixed with volcanic rock similar to what we saw yesterday in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park’s Painted Wall but at a smaller scale. It was really about just trying to find things that looked cool and different from everything else.
After all of these rock hunting experiences, I think I prefer the ones where we’re digging. They use the brain more and I feel like I have more of an objective and clear kind of rock I’m looking for rather than something like a river bank where it’s just a needle in a haystack.
Here’s the gallery containing all of today’s pictures.
