Friday, Oct. 4 - Today was a relatively quiet drive, although we did do a pass of 9,570 feet. But all but the first part was on 2 lane roads, not too busy, with nice scenery, varied, with mountains, a canyon or two, and open range land. We were only about 4 hours on the road, including a stop to buy 2 pizzas for the price of one at the local Kum and Go (I kid you not) service station in Kremmling.

We arrived at an r.v. park near Granby that just opened this year. It's going to be a huge operation once opened completely, with everything from villas to yurts and on and on. Not much is open yet, and our thought to have a swim and a hot tub died when we found the pool in the wide open spaces with the wind howling, and the hot tubs not hot enough to warrant the dip. So we went to the bar, which was fortunately open, and had a beer.

Tomorrow we will drive through the Rocky Mountain Park and end up at Estes, where we have a place booked on their last day of operation. In other words, the season is closing down for the type of travel we do. We're also booked in for Sunday night at Golden, just outside of Denver, and can extend if we decide to do more than a day or two in the city.

I said that I'd post some pictures from the previous three days of adventures. Here goes. Brace yourself for maybe a dozen, if I can manage to upload them.

First picture isn't one I meant to enter, but it's a shot of the 2,000 foot wall that rises above the Gunnison River in the Black Canyon. It's called the painted wall, for obvious reasons, the result of thousands of years of erosion of different layers of rock.
The second shows the Gunnison roaring along at the bottom of the canyon. When going full tilt, it can carry boulders weighing thousands of pounds, creating quite an erosion agent.
The third is a shot of Gail ahead of me as we did a two mile hike below the rim of the canyon.
Fourth, fifthand sixth are pictures of the land we drove through in full fall foliage. Pictures don't do the actual scenery credit, but the golds of the aspens are beautiful.
 Seventh, a series of coke ovens stretching along the road in the coal-mining area south of Carbondale.
Eighth and ninth, Gail relaxing as we clambered up the 1,100 foot vertical to get to the Hanging Lake.
And finally, a couple of shots of said lake, which is quite stunning, and a wonderful reward for a tough hike.
Hope you enjoy the pics. That's it for now. The wind is howling as I write, and it's supposed to go down to -5 C, so we hope we survive the night intact. All for now. More later. Stay tuned.