Today, I went on another Colorado Mountain Club hike, this time traveling solo while Dianne attended church. For once I had to carry my own lunch.
The hike was on the Sunset Rocks Trail in the Gunnison National Conservation Area east of Olathe. That’s about an hour’s drive south of the Grand Valley. From our old house in Aurora, an hour’s drive would only take me to the other side of the metro area. Here, I reach trailheads.
Three out of four fellow hikers hailed from Montrose, and they met at 8:00 a.m. That meant I had to get up long before sunup and leave Fruita at 6:30 to meet them at the turnoff in Olathe a bit after 8:00. I’m desperately allergic to mornings, making this the most painful part of the endeavor. Driving in, we passed some colorful hills on the way to the trailhead.
The first part of the hike took us to a cave/tunnel through the rock. I always though to be a good cave, it had to have stalagmites and stalactites or at least a hibernating bear. This one had none of the above.
From there, the hike was largely across rocky, nondescript terrain sparsely covered with piñon and juniper. The trail was largely up and down, which offered the feeling of getting a good workout.
Part of the route was open to ATVs and the rest open to dirt bikes. It’s been said that ATVs/dirt bikes are Japan’s revenge for Hiroshima, and I believe it. We encountered tracks, but fortunately encountered none of the above. They must have all been in church.
Besides the lack of motorized madness, the beauty of the hike were the views. To the south stretched a wall of the San Juan’s jagged peaks rising above a layer of clouds. Below to the west lay the farmlands around Olathe and Delta with the Uncompahgre Plateau offering a dark barrier beyond. To the north and east rose the hills we would next have to ascend and descend.
We stopped for brunch at our arbitrary turnaround point, about three miles from the trailhead. From there, it was turn around and hike back to the cars. Civilization and beer lay beyond.
Exploring this area may prove to be more fun than I thought.
The map of the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area shows a plethora of trails cross-crossing and looping through the canyon country south of the Colorado River off Kingsview Road.
Those are just the designated trails. In addition lie many undesignated, “social trails” that wind through the area. As we soon found out, some of these are as well trodden as the official pathways and equally interesting.
Our goal today was to do the 10-mile round-trip hike from the Pollock Bench Trailhead to the point where the Rattlesnake Arches Trail from the top meets the Rattlesnake Arches trail from the bottom. We grabbed the BLM supplied map at the trailhead and set off up the Pollock Bench Trail to its junction with the Rattlesnake Arches Trail. The path, an old, abandoned Jeep road, was extremely well defined.
The lower stretch of the Rattlesnake Arches Trail wanders across the flats and into and out of a small side canyon or two. It was well used, and except for where it crossed baren slickrock, proved easy to follow.
We reached the lip of Pollock Canyon, a wide, deep gouge in through the sandstone landscape. A hiker with two leashed bulldogs we had met earlier on the trail said he had turned around because he didn’t think the dogs could get down a series of ledges. Perhaps this is where those ledges lay.
I assumed it was, although there were neither trail signs nor cairns marking a route down. I started zigzagging down trying to follow footprints left in the few spaces of loose dirt. I was a few dozen yards below when Dianne shouted out that she had found the trail up on the rim. Since my route looked somewhat precarious, I was more than happy to get back on a well-defined trail.
We followed the footprints of dozens of hikers as we hiked the trail along the rim. Stunning cliffs that appear to be hundreds of feet high lined the deep canyon. We would lose the pathway in rocky spots, but always rediscovered it just beyond. The farther we progressed, the fainter the trail became. It became obvious we were following a social trail, not the official route to the arches.
Our GPS watches said we had traveled four miles from the trailhead. It was decision time. On the map, it looked like we could continue onward and hit the Pollock Bench Trail, which would lead us back to our truck, or we could turn around and follow the known path back. Common sense dictated the latter option.
We turned around and headed back. Looking down from the spot where I had started to descend from the rim, we saw a BLM sign down at the bottom of canyon floor. I pulled out my binoculars and read what it said. It pointed toward Rattlesnake Arches. I had been on the right route before we discovered the social trail.
We continued back to the truck, walking past sandstone cliffs, buttes and hoodoos bathed in the golden light of the late-day sun. Across the Grand Valley, the Book Cliffs looked stunning with inky shadows accentuating its cliffside skirts. Wispy clouds offered the first hint of a soon-to-be colorful sunset. Yes, it was just another typical afternoon in canyon country.
Today’s hike was a delightful failure. We didn’t succeed in our effort to follow the Rattlesnake Arches Trail to its junction at the top. Instead, we accidently ventured into the Great Unknown, following a scenic, undesignated trail that offered delightfully lofty views.
We now have a goal for a future hike. We’ll have to follow this undesignated trail and see where it goes.
One of the first things we did when we first moved to Colorado back in 1983 was to join the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC). It proved to be an excellent way to discover places to hike/climb and make new friends. During my travel writing years, we found we weren’t using the club services and dropped out.
Now, having moved to a new area and looking to discover places to hike/climb and make new friends, we rejoined and signed up for the first available hike. It was a hike to Rattlesnake Arches, the largest concentration of natural sandstone arches this side of Utah. We’ve been there at least twice in the past and were looking forward to another visit.
There are two ways to get to the arches, which are located in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area. The long route is to go from the bottom up, which involves driving a few miles on a graded road to the Pollock Bench Trailhead and hiking 7¼+ miles up to the arches and 7¼+ miles back.
The short option is to do the 5¼-mile walk down from the top. Unfortunately, that involves driving about ten or so miles of high-clearance dirt roads, the last few miles of which are 4×4-worthy. That’s the route we’d be going on our CMC hike.
The nine hikers on the trip pile into three 4×4 vehicles, which include a Toyota FJ Cruiser, a Nissan Frontier 4×4 crew cab pickup and our full-size Nissan Titan Pro-4X crew cab pickup. The FJ Cruiser heads down the dicey parts of the road with no problem. The Frontier truck with its shorter wheelbase and limited overhang seems to have no issues.
I drive last, nursing our long-wheelbase, long-overhang monster down the trail. Nissan may like to market this “Pro-4X rig as off-road worthy, but a Jeep it is not. I sure miss my Xterra, which would have been as good as the FJ Cruiser on this route. We do finally make it to the trailhead with no undercarriage scrapes and most of the body paint still intact.
The hike is rather straightforward. It begins with a switchbacking plunge down a few hundred vertical feet, then follows a wide bench a couple of miles to the arches. After lunch at Cedar Tree Arch, trail’s end, we hike back. The morning’s plunge down is now a grunt up.
Near the top, there’s another, relatively flat trail that leads to an overview of Cedar Tree Arch from above. Most of us opt to extend the hike and head that way.
Back at the trailhead, we pile back into our vehicles and begin driving up the 4×4 portion of the 4×4 road. Going up the dicey loose rock is even more “fun” than descending it, but again, we make it to the top with no scrapes or dents.
The route back to civilization takes us right past the Glade Park Store, a classic little market seemingly in the middle of nowhere. To reward ourselves for a successful drive out, we stop in for a bit sustenance. I am careful to keep the open bottle out of sight as we drive back through Colorado National Monument and on to home.
Over our first eight days in Fruita, our only “hikes” were walks down a few paved bike trails and through neighborhoods. Our first real hike in the woods came on day nine.
Considering all of the close-in destinations available, we chose to do one that involved a “long,” 17-mile drive down the interstate to the Rabbit Valley area of the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area. Although it’s largely a 4×4 playground for the ATV and dirt-bike crowd, there are some hikers-only trails out there for folks like us.
Our destination was the hikers’ trail up Rabbit’s Ear Mesa. I’m not sure how the mesa earned its name. This squatty plateau does not look the least like anything I’ve see poking from bunny’s noggin.
The trail climbs up for about a mile, then splits to offer a nice loop hike along the perimeter of the mesa top. The BLM sign says the trail is 4.8 miles long. The BLM website says the loop is 5.6 miles long. The map on the Colorado Trail Explorer (Cotrex) website indicates a 5.9-mile length. We set our Garmin GPS watches and head off to determine the true length.
It’s a 700-foot vertical grunt up to get to the mesa top. From there we are treated to a relatively flat trail with splendid views of the Colorado River meandering far below. Cottonwood and tamarisk leaves offer autumnal splashes of streamside gold along the river. We spot rafters and kayakers slowly paddling down the lazy current.
Off through the haze to the west rise the La Sal Mountains near Moab, their slopes glistening with snow. Rounding the mesa top and heading down, we gaze across the valley to the Book Cliffs stretching off into Utah. There’s just so much interesting canyon country to explore out here. I think we’re going to like this place.
Back at the truck, we check our watches. According to Garmin GPS, we hiked 6.33 miles.
We have a battery-operated, indoor/outdoor thermometer that we use at the trailer. The sending unit for the outdoor sensor is attached to Velcro under the frame of the trailer so it’s constantly in the shade.
It’s always worked well. Temperature readings have consistently been within a degree or two of what our AccuWeather app says it is locally.
This morning was an extreme exception. AccuWeather said the local temperature was a nippy 19 degrees (that’s -7 degrees for you Canadians) while our indoor/outdoor thermometer read a pleasant 41 degrees (that’s +5 degrees north of the border).
It took me a full three seconds to realize what had happened. We never thought to take the thermometer out from under the trailer when we put up the skirting. It was now nicely enclosed beneath us behind a wall of ½-inch foam insulation.
That meant that while it was subfreezing outside, it was a balmy 41 under the trailer. Before when we got up, the trailer floor felt icy cold on bare feet. Today it was almost borderline warm. On the positive side, that meant that $150 and a day’s work spent on the skirting is paying off.
The negative thing is that now I’ve either got to tear into the skirting to recover the thermometer sending unit, or I’ve got to order a another indoor/outdoor thermometer that I can place outside of the skirting.
We’re all set (we think) for enduring a cold Colorado winter of “camping” in our trailer here in Fruita.
We’ve got a heated hose to keep the fresh-water line flowing. We’ve skirted the trailer with ½-inch foam board, which the RV park management folks insist will keep us warmer. We’ve loaded our sweatshirts and parkas into the trailer closet. The beer is well chilled in the under-bed storage compartment and the pantry is filled with ready-to-heat soups. Our skis are tuned.
After 43 nights parked on the High Plains of eastern Colorado, it was time to move to our new hometown on Colorado’s Western Slope. A storm in the high country delayed our escape for two days, but as we finally headed west, we were treated to spectacular views of the mountains slathered with snow.
Consuming six cups of coffee enroute ensured that we’d have plenty of time to enjoy the views from every rest area along the route.
We checked into our new RV park in Fruita, which lies about two miles from the site of our new house. The next day, we drove over to check out the new place.
The house now has shingles, the plumbing and electrical lines are in and the concrete for front stoop and back patio has been poured. Unfortunately, the construction supervisor tells us that it will be more than a few weeks before the place is totally finished.
My hair stylist asked why we were moving to Fruita rather than neighboring Grand Junction. I explained that it was all about location, location, location. Here’s an example.
Late that afternoon we felt a need for nature. We threw cheese, crackers and a bottle of bubbly into the back of the car and drove up the road. Twenty minutes later, we were sitting at the edge of a canyon in Colorado National Monument where we dined while watching the setting sun turn the sandstone cliffs and pillars into towers of shimmering gold.
Coming back into Denver from our Canyon Country trip last May, we became stuck in stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic on the interstate as we tried to make it through Denver. My lovely wife studied the situation and announced in no uncertain terms, “That’s it. We’re moving to Grand Junction!”
[Dianne insists that she merely “suggested” we move to Grand Junction, but after 40 years of marriage, I know it’s best to take her suggestions as commands.]
Grand Junction is a place we’ve long longed to live. We checked it out years ago when Dianne was still working as a nurse, and I was still shooting photos on film. She’d have to start at a new hospital, and I’d have to find a suitable photo lab. I’d also have to get from the Junction to Denver to fly anywhere. We chose not to do it at that time.
A week after Dianne’s edict/suggestion, we went for a hike in Staunton State Park, which lies in the foothills west of Denver. There, we chatted with a volunteer couple who lived in a patio home nearby and loved it. With everything taken care of by the homeowners’ association, they could leave anytime they wanted and be gone as long as they wanted. The patio home idea sounded perfect.
The next day, I Googled “patio homes” in Grand Junction. Mixed in with all the conventional homes for sale that had patios, I found a link to a patio home community for folks over 55. A few days later, we drove over the hill to check it out. The quiet, cleanliness and friendliness of the community impressed us, so put our names on the wait list for a future home. It was a long wait list, we were told.
Maybe next year we’ll get the call, we hoped as we planned our summer travels.
Two weeks later, we got an email asking if we would be interested in one of the units currently under construction. We drove back over the hill to check it out. These patio homes are front and rear duplexes, with a pair of duplexes sharing a common driveway. Ours would be a rear unit at the edge of what will be a grassy cul-de-sac. We agreed to buy it.
Even though our new home would not be done for months (only the foundation had been poured), we decided to take advantage of a hot sellers’ market in Denver and immediately put our house up for sale. We contacted a few realtors, chose Pamela Meyer, whom we had contacted a decade or two ago when we first thought about moving to Grand Junction, and signed all the necessary forms.
Our summer trip to the Left Coast would have to wait. Paraphrasing Admiral Farragut, it was “damn the deadlines, full speed ahead” time.
We had a few weeks to box up and remove 37-years of accumulated belongings from our house. Friends gave us some boxes to use, and we bought many, many more. We visited Lowe’s so often, they gave us our own reserved parking spot.
To hold everything before we could move into the new place, we rented a 10×15-foot, climate-controlled storage unit. We figured that would be more than enough room to store our belongings. Eleventy-seven truckloads later, it was filled wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling. We rented another.
We rented a third storage unit, this one 10×20-feet, for just our furniture and hired a five-man moving crew to haul everything out there, including our 300-pound log table. With the furniture gone, we spent a week sleeping atop a leaky air mattress on the bedroom floor. It was like camping, but without any of the pleasures of camping.
Deadlines approached. We had a cleaning crew scheduled for September 1st and needed to get everything out of the house so they could do their thing. We moved into our trailer and began camping out on our driveway.
On September 2nd, the staging furniture arrived, turning our now empty house into something resembling a model home. It looked so pretty, we considered rebuying the house from ourselves and moving back in.
On September 3rd, the photographer was scheduled to shoot a portfolio of images for the online listing. Before he arrived, we hooked up the trailer, drove over the hill and bunked down in a state park campground in the Grand Junction area. Finally, we were really camping.
We had two offers for the house even before it officially went up for sale on the 7th. A slew of showings were scheduled over the weekend. By Monday morning, we had more offers, one of which we accepted. Pamela was able to get us $36,000 over our asking price, more than enough to cover all of the commissions and title fees. It was time to sign more forms and wait for the closing date to arrive, hoping nothing happened to derail the sale.
One of the exciting things about buying a brand-new house is the ability to have it customized just the way we want. We spent countless hours on Google researching flooring, countertops, water heaters and the like. We made a room-by-room list of modifications we wanted. Then the work began.
Instead of just going through a catalog of options, customizing our house meant physically visiting individual vendors. The first was the cabinet vendor who would be building the kitchen cabinets, bathroom cabinets and full-wall entertainment center.
“Anything but oak,” the cabinet lady said as we arrived.
Dianne poured over the non-oak wood and stain samples, finally deciding on what she liked. She ordered the pull-out shelves and optional spice rack she wanted. I got to redesign the entertainment center to include a wine cooler, stereo cabinet and pull-out drawers for our CD collection.
Two hours later, we made our way to the countertop vendor. Rather than granite which needs to be periodically sealed, we opted to go with quartz. Dianne wanted something that would show dirt, so she picked out a nice, light-colored, dull plain pattern. That only took an hour. We took a sample with us so we could make sure it worked well with everything else.
Next stop was the flooring vendor. I was hoping to go with real hardwood, but the flooring guy advised against that. Something to do with the climate and care, I think. Instead, we chose a high-quality laminate. We needed to make sure the flooring and countertops would look good with the cabinets, so we took flooring samples and our countertop sample and headed back to the cabinet lady.
“Ughh,” she said. The countertop choice was an abomination.
She pulled out a sample of granite and it looked far better. Although the pattern in the rock would hide dirt, Dianne agreed to go with it.
We went back to the countertop guy, found a similar slab of granite and ordered that for our countertops. He assured us that his products could be coated with a no-care, 10-year sealant, and unlike quartz, we could set hot pans directly atop the granite, although he didn’t recommend it.
Then it was back to the flooring guy to pick out tile for the bathroom floors, showers, entryway and kitchen backsplash. I think we were there for over four hours, the final hour of which was spent with Dianne laboring over the grout color.
Back with the developer, we went over electric and plumbing issues, planning the lighting, ceiling fans, plug configurations, water heater style (gas on demand) and laundry area configuration (stacked washer and electric dryer).
With all that done, it was finally time to head onward. We still had some camping to do.
