After leaving the Ouray, CO area we moved to Cedar Creek RV Park in Montrose which served as our base camp for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. . There is a mini-golf course here. Once set up we went to the Horsefly Brewery for lunch.
The weather was nice. It felt warm in the sun, yet like someone left the refrigerator door open when the wind blew. We drove through the parks stopping at the overlooks. I hadn’t thought about there being bears in the park but we realized there were when someone told us they had just seen a bear on the trail by the visitor center. Unfortunately we missed it. The next day we went back to see the East part of the park which is a steep 14% grade and you see the diversion tunnel for water at the bottom.
We moved to Junction West RV Park in Grand Junction CO. From here we visited a botanical garden, looked for wild horses, and visited Palisade, CO.
The botanical garden was small but very nice. $5 admission. It is partially staffed by mentally challenged individuals who also benefit from the proceeds. The plants here were really beautiful.
Later we went to Edgewater Brewery – Kannah which was right next door to the garden.
The next day we went to do one of my bucket list items. Look for wild horses. I didn’t hold out much hope since we were on foot and so near civilization but I wanted to give it a try. It was a hot day and we should have started much earlier. Little Book Cliffs is BLM land. We had to climb a hill and walk along some narrow trails which I’d almost call a ledge.
Gnats were out in full force and caused me to want to wave my hand in the air in front of my face constantly. They were biting me and I ended up with dark red itchy spots. Michael spotted the horses first. 3 of them. We think the darkest one was a male and two females. It was approaching mid-day and they appeared to be as hot as we were.
We started to continue on a little but I realized I was going through my water pretty fast, we hadn’t brought more than a small snack with us and I still had to climb back over that large hill. Plus the gnats were relentless. So we decided it was in our best interest to turn back and be happy with the 3 we found.