📍 Western Colorado
My GOOD pal Mitch is a bagger of National Parks, you could say. For years I've been looking at photos of him across the country in front of those big signs and hiking around some epic landscapes. Been jealous. I'll admit it.
He hit me up when he was scheming to visit Mesa Verde and Black Canyon of the Gunnison in three days. Within the past year we had gone on a quick road trip to Great Sand Dunes (I wrote about that trip here) and when he invited me on this one there was no question: Yes, I'm coming
Mesa Verde
To me, Mesa Verde was a little underwhelming. Still worth seeing and learning about. It wasn't so dreamy-landscape oriented but instead all about these fascinating and mysterious people who lived in the cliffs around there during the stone age. For an anthropologist or someone with more context to soak up the info into, I could see how awesome it might be. They did so many cool things with the yucca plant and I remember being really struck by that because to me it had always just been the asshole of a plant that poked me through my jeans. Paintbrushes and baskets and rope! They made climbing rope with yucca.
At sunset we hung out up by a fire lookout near the entrance. You can see forever up there in almost all directions. So beautiful.
Ice Lakes
Not much else hits like an alpine lake. Mitch was right in scoping this one out on the drive between the two parks.
And after seeing this first photo I do remember: it was STEEP. Look at that elevation graph in the middle of the sign. Reminded me of football workouts with this guy back in the day.
The water at the top was so over-the-top blue, so I'm glad these couple photos really brings that out. It really looked like that.
Black Canyon of the Gunnison
Black Canyon of the Gunnison was really dope. Up near Duluth we used to geek out at this little run of 200 foot cliffs by Lake Superior called Palisade Head. This reminded me of that a lot but this was miles of Palisade Heads making up a gorge straight down to the Gunnison River. They say some parts of the canyon only get a half hour of light a day.
When I visit big, breathtaking places like this, I almost always find myself contemplating what it must have been like to stumble upon it while out exploring before a map could take you there. Or to have lived before land could be owned and monetized and it was just this horribly scary but important part of your home.
