Summer vacation to Colorado

Whoa, long overdue blog post! And hopefully several in a row, since we have a lot of catching up to do since the mid-June roundup!

I was inspired to write today since a news item reminded me of our vacation in July and how lucky our timing was. But first, some Colorado geography. We flew into Vail and drove west in a rental car to Glenwood Springs. At Glenwood Springs, we rented bikes and rode along the bike track in the canyon, then drove to Paonia. We stayed in Paonia for several days, then drove back to Glenwood Springs, then back to Vail, where we stayed for another several days. Not much driving at all, in fact we didn’t even fill up the rental car with gas until heading to the airport!

Here comes the news item – the area around Glenwood Springs got a lot of rain just last week and due to a total lack of vegetation in the mountains there (because of wildfires last summer, all very ominous patterns unfortunately), there were massive mudslides that have shut down the highway between Vail and Glenwood Springs, and it is expected to be closed for a few weeks. See what Google recommends for driving between these places without I-70 now, a lot more driving! Anyway, we were very lucky with our timing both for less time in transit and also that we got to ride bikes at Glenwood Springs.

I-70 approaching Glenwood Springs from the east is quite the engineering marvel. It was built to preserve as much of the canyon as possible, and so there are places where both lanes of the highway are stacked vertically to save space. The Colorado River is beneath all the roads, and even with all this going on, they still built a bike path that goes beside and above the river. So cool. We rode about an hour east then turned at the point where the path closed and back to the bike shop in Glenwood Springs. We took electric bikes which are amazing to ride. So helpful in the boost that they give – it means you can very effortlessly go much farther!

We then drove on to Paonia to our friends Art and Erin’s place. I think a lot of you have met Art and Erin, and also I found in the archives that we visited them 7 years ago, on a winter trip with the boys! Art and Erin have found so many great things to do in the area in the almost 10 years that they’ve been there. The first day we went on a hike up to an alpine meadow.

Here’s the view from their patio, where we hung out a lot under the shade of some really lovely black walnut trees. At the end of their property, there are about a dozen yaks.

The next day we went with Art to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. This is relatively unvisited national park, and the north rim, where we visited, is also the lesser visited part. It was really amazing though, a driving trip with stops all along the rim to view the canyon. Readers may notice a similarity to the Blue Mountains near Sydney! Except this canyon is really spectacularly deep but not as wide across.

Some of the photos may look like we were being very daring, but really, we were not. And while it looks like John is doing yoga near the edge, he was really just getting very secure to take a look!

Back in Paonia, we got Erin (who was preparing the Inn that they keep for arriving guests) and went out to some vineyards for lunch and tastings. Great food, wine and company! As I think you can tell in the photos, it was really hot.

On Monday morning, we said bye to our friends and headed out toward Vail by way of Marble, Colorado, a mountain valley town known for its well known restaurant called Slow Groovin BBQ. We stopped for a hike along the way to get our appetite ready and as is true of Colorado in general, it’s pretty hard to go wrong with the scenic hikes, even ones that just have numbers and are right off the highway! Note in the photos below the examples of friendly fir trees and aspen trees – they have a symbiotic relationship and like to grow together!

Marble is super cute and we were hungry! So were a lot of other people in Marble – Slow Groovin BBQ was busy! After lunch we went for another hike up above the town.

After that, we had a pretty uneventful drive back to Vail, and I’ll pick up there next time!