Colorado National Monument Sunset

Since I'm back in the labor force, I no longer automatically get a spring break. But spring is a fine time to explore so I still took one. In the waning days of March, I leveraged a Monday off for Cesar Chavez Day into a four day weekend by also taking Friday off. I used Friday to drive to the Grand Valley and Colorado National Monument, across the Continental Divide on the state's Western Slope.

The drive on Interstate 70 is geologically epic. Mountains brushing fourteen thousand feet shoot up all around, twisting the road into curls and yanking it up and down. Then the ground drops away and you are inside lush Glenwood Canyon, hovering over the roaring Colorado River, which has here carved golden vertical walls hundreds of feet high and will again downriver in Utah and Arizona.

The curves, inclines, and subsequent declines of the drive through Colorado's High Country felt like a race track in a video game (specifically, Mario Cart for Nintendo 64). After a couple hours, the peaks give way to plateaus, evidence of millions of years of erosive forces.

Colorado National Monument preserves a strange terrain of red rock cliffs overlooking Grand Junction and the neighboring farmlands. I arrived there late in the afternoon and spent a couple hours driving the precarious road on the canyon's edge and enjoying the view before hiking the short trail to Window Rock to watch the sun set over the wide valley thousands of feet below.