Black Canyon of the Gunnison (ft. a Funky Night in a National Forest)

With the vast amount of cattle fields out west, one would think that touching a cow would be a simple task. I’m here to tell you that it’s not. Waking up in Kebler Pass gave us (me) the perfect first attempt at it – and I failed. After driving back down the mountains and restocking our food, we were off to our next National Park!

Black Canyon of the Gunnison has been on my bucket list for quite some time now. That paired along with it being one of our earlier National Parks on the road trip made for a pretty exciting day. While the Gunnison River flows through the land, it continuously carves out this giant canyon. Apparently the canyon got its name due to the steepness of its walls and the inability of sunlight to reach its depths. There are two roads you can take to get into the park, both with various lookouts to view the canyon from – the North Rim and the South Rim. We ended up taking the South Rim route. Along this drive there are 12 lookouts and you best bet we stopped at each one. Some of the stops had a short walk to the lookout, whereas some were a little longer. Overall, most of the lookouts were only a few hundred yards off the road.

After venturing around for a few hours we had lunch at a little picnic area overlooking the canyon before our last little trek off the South Rim. This stop was the longest hike to a lookout at about 1,400 yards which wasn’t too bad. The views from left to right were amazing, with fields on one side and the canyon on the other. In the distance you could see snow capped mountains with what looked like a storm rolling in.

We also couldn’t leave without driving down the East Portal Road which is a 16% grade down into the canyon. It was a bit nerve wracking riding the brakes for that long and vice versa climbing back up and out. However while we were down in the canyon alongside the river we spotted our first bear of the trip!

On our way out we stopped at the visitor center again to refill our waters. This is also where we gave our first mini van tour! The weather was beautiful and we couldn’t have asked for a better day in the park. Leaving Black Canyon of the Gunnison, we drove through Montrose and headed into Uncompahgre National Forest where we planned to spend the night.

As we were driving through the forest, twilight was approaching and we kept our eyes peeled for a pull off that never came. And this is where things got a little funky. Our first encounter in the forest happened when we got into the thick of the trees and an elk came off the side of a hill right in front of the van. Michael tapped on the brakes enough to not hit it but within a split second another elk followed leading Michael to full force step on the brakes. Carrying on with our trek through the woods, we wanted to find more of a clear area to try and see the stars. However, after a bit of time in the forest we realized there weren’t pull offs anywhere – regardless of if there were trees or not. With that, as we came out into a clearing we decided to try what looked like it could have been a nice, solid, grassy pull off. It wasn’t. Mind you it’s now the middle of the night and we could feel the van sinking into the muddy ground. It dawned on us that we actually got the van stuck. There were no trees to attach a strap and come-along to to try and pull ourselves out, and absolutely no one was driving by to lend some assistance. We got to work and with a little bit of scrapping mud out from around the tires with a pipe and hammer, some gravel from the road, a few pieces of cardboard (aka our makeshift traction tracks), and a little elbow grease we were free. So in a National Forest with no pull offs, where did we sleep? At the entrance sign of course. We were dirty and tired and that was the final stop before the highway which we needed to get on to head to our next destination. That being said, Utah could wait until the next morning.