Thursday Oct 3 - This is our first time to visit Colorado, and we have chosen an excellent time to be here. Not because the tourist numbers are down, as it's sort of between seasons, meaning there are lots of people around doing the things we're doing. But not to a disturbing extent. The main reason to choose this time  of year is because of the fall colours. Despite the fact there aren't many reds in the mountain foliage, the golds and russets and rusts and greens make up for it. Mountainsides are spattered with a variety of hues, creating images my poor photo skills can't capture. But we keep trying.

The other thing you'd better like if you come here...well, two things, actually...canyons and altitude. Everywhere there's a river there's a canyon. None of these streams that meander along, creating ox-bow lakes and lazy curves and turns. Here most of the rivers we've seen so far move along quite rapidly, and have been doing so for millenia upon millenia, cutting, carving, slashing, deepening, creating amazing canyons. Some of these depths you can only see from the rims, so the government has kindly designed roads that let you wind along the top, looking down into the depths at key places.

A case in point: Black Canyon of the Gunnison. This area in south-western Colorado has been turned into a National Park, carefully managed so that people can appreciate the wonders of the canyon. They claim the erosion process here has been going on for 1 million years, which seems like a long time. But the rock that forms the canyon is really hard stuff, black in color, although striated in places with various colours because of different layers piled one on top of the other. In some places, the canyon walls are 3,000 feet high. Not kidding! Not as deep as Grand Canyon, but whereas the GC is very broad, stretching out for miles, this one is very narrow. only several hundred feet across in places.

So needless to say, it's pretty spectacular. We enjoyed every viewpoint, walking out a few hundred metres in places to look at the varying landscape. And that didn't satisfy us. Nope! We had to do a two mile hike at the end, a loop that dropped down quite a distance, then back up to the Visitor Center. Naturally, we chose to go clock-wise, and found the climb up at the end much steeper than it would have been had we gone the other way. But it was a fine hike, and left us tired but happy.

Next day we did a beautiful drive, the first part in canyon territory, the second in more open country. The colours for the canyon portion were beautiful. We took many photos, and hope we caught a bit of the flavor provided by golden patches of cottonwoods, mixed with aspens still fighting to keep their greens, and low-lying shrubs of rust. We crossed a pass that was nearly 9,000 feet up, and came to some areas where there used to be coal mining, as well as a town that used to be the center of coke production for the west. These coke ovens produced pure carbon for the production of steel, 159 of them in all, stretching along the highway as a reminder of a local industry that was so important in its time, but faded away as other methods were developed.

We ended the day by shopping in Carbondale, a lovely small city, and then went on to set up camp just outside of Glenwood Springs. Here is the largest hot pool in the world. Here there are multiple hot pools to ease your pain. Here there is a feature called the Hanging Lake. Here is the interstate that goes straight into Denver. Here we had a lovely late afternoon, surrounded by peaks, in a little hollow by the Colorado River, until 5:10, when the sun disappeared behind one of the mountains. But it remained pleasant until around 9, when the temps started to drop. By rising-up time this morning, the temp was zero. Sky a brilliant blue. September saw less than an inch of rain here. maybe less than a quarter of an inch. Not much rain at all, in other words.

Today, we headed into town to board a bus provided to get us to the Hanging Lake. As the name suggests, this lake is located way up a mountainside, just hanging there, it would seem. So it's a fascinating place to see, so much so that you have to have a reservation to do the hike (yes, it's a hike of over a mile almost straight up, the vertical rise over 1,000 feet). The bus got us there, and up we started. 75 minutes later we clambered up the last incline, walked along a lovely boardwalk, and had our breaths taken away. The lake is fed by a double waterfall, which creates the lake on a relatively flat shelf on the side of the mountain. The stream continues on down the mountain, providing the route up to the lake. It's not really a lake in our terms, more a pond, because the shelf is limited in size. But it's truly beautiful, the water a lovely green, a few fish swimming, and lovely vegetation surrounding it. I'll post a picture or two, but justice will not be done by my images.

We had lunch there, enjoying the view, then climbed further to see a spout, shooting out the torrent that produces the water falls. We had to be back to our bus by 2:00, and made it with 5 minutes to spare. The bus runs every 45 minutes, delivering people willing to take the challenge. Then home to do the laundry. See, it's not all fun and games. Mundane activities are part of the routine. Speaking of which, I have to go as it is my duty to lug the laundry home. I'll post some pictures another time. More later. Stay tuned.