Cimarron River

     We are staying in a campground in the park.  It is just full of wildlife.  We are regularly visited by rabbits, chipmunks, noisy robins and a bunch of mule deer.  There are a lot of warnings about black bear, but we haven’t seen any so far.  The campsites are very well separated by brush and scrub oak.  The deer just wander around in the brush and right up to the campsites.  I am appalled by parents who let their small children walk right up to the deer, but also totally amused at the Iowa folks who ran to their car and rolled up the windows when the deer come by.    It is very quiet here, except for the robins who seem to consider it their duty to sing continuously and loudly from dawn to dusk.  They must be some special, high altitude, high energy robins.

    The fly fishers that we talked to yesterday told us about an area just outside the park where we could drive right down to the river instead of looking down at it from hundreds of feet up on a ledge.  We went to the town of Cimarron and followed the Cimarron River to where it meets the Gunnison at “Morrow Dam.”   At this point we were able to take the Mesa Creek Trail on a bridge across the Gunnison below the dam and then look up the gorge.  The river was just roaring along here, despite being only a partial flow from the dam.  This is one place where the drought has not affected the level of the reservoir behind the dam so plenty of water flows through the canyon.  It was not so hot today and a pretty hike by the river. 

    We drove into Montrose

today to get some WIFI service so we could download some more books.  We are getting older and find that we can be adventuresome for part of the day and then are happy to sit and read and chase the chipmunks out of the campsite for the rest of the day.  However, we were both mostly out of books.  So we went to McDonalds, had some fast food, read the paper and filled up on E-books from the library.  As long as we had phone service we also called home to wish the boys, “Happy Father’s Day.”  We only reached Arik and Kellen.  Arik told us that Matt went swimming with his phone and was on the plane home.  We will have to talk with him tomorrow when we get back to civilization in Grand Junction.

     Each night I have chased the sunset around the campground trying to get a good view.  Tonight we drove back along the canyon rim to look out across the black walls of the canyon to the red sky above.  This has been a day of little thundershowers so the sky was full of big clouds and some lightening as well as clear areas with gold clouds.  It was cool and quiet as we looked down into the dark canyon and we could hear the sound of the Gunnison River thundering past.  I am left with a great memory of this beautiful new park.