Blue Mesa Reservoir, now Fruita

We stopped at Elk Creek Campground on the shore of Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest body of water in Colorado for a few days.  We really like the campground there and it was a stepping off point to do a little exploring.  

Blue Mesa right from our campground

We went into Gunnison for lunch and just so you don't think all of the restaurants we find are wonderful, we pretty much bombed at the W Cafe:(    But we made the most of it by having a good lunch in Crested Butte on another day.  After walking around the town, a little too hippy/chic for us, we tried to go up to Kebler Pass, then up over Ohio Pass and loop around in a big circle.  

Still a lot of snow

Pretty from this distance

Unfortunately Ohio Pass was still closed with snow, so we ended up making a really big circle up and over Kebler, then west on Hwy 12 to Rte 133 then south on 92 at Hotchkiss which takes you on the north and east side of Black Canyon of the Gunnison.  It was a long way around made much longer, much to Jan's distress by me the heights chicken of them all.  For those of you who have been to the Black Canyon know that it is about 2000' deep, and has the most sheer drop offs that we have ever seen, makes the Grand Canyon look like a cake walk.  And our Rte 92 has the vehicle on the drop off side of the road.  Now none of this bothers Jan at all, but after I was crawling along in the center of the road, only venturing back in my own lane when threatened by an oncoming vehicle, it made a long drive very, very long for Jan. 

This pic gives you the sense of steepness!

 So after that day we wanted to go up along beautiful Taylor Creek to Taylor Park Reservoir and then back up to Cottonwood Pass, 12,126', that we enjoyed once before.  We packed a picnic lunch and headed up along the creek.  

Beautiful Taylor Creek

It cooled off some as we climbed which was welcome as the temps are into the 90's.  We had our lunch overlooking Taylor Lake.

Taylor Park Reservoir

Then we worked our way around the lake to the Cottonwood Pass road.  It's all dirt and we could see they were in the process of grading and "treating" it.  We made our way around the graders and came up on a flag girl in the road who explained to us they were putting down magnesium chloride and the road may be a bit slippery and did we want to continue or turn around?  We asked if there were any other side effects, and she explained it would attach itself to our truck like concrete and if we went on it was her advice to clean it off asap.  She also said it was the same salt they treated the roads with in the winter.  We hesitated, but decided to continue on.  It was a bit like a muddy road but not bad, so didn't give it much thought.  After a few miles Jan yelled stop, and we were able to see a big bull moose eating lunch in the thickets along the road.

Bullwinkle

Up we went, a nice road, winding mostly through the forest until we broke out above the tree line.

View down towards Buena Vista

Cottonwood Pass

Still quite a bit of snow

A very pretty spot

We walked around a bit at the pass, and both of us could really feel the altitude, very easy to start puffing and run out of breath.  We hung out for awhile, amazingly it was very comfortable temperature wise.  Then down we went back to Gunnison.  I seemed to notice the truck wasn't shifting correctly, seemed to hold the lower gears and wouldn't upshift, but since we were barely doing 15 mph until Taylor Lake I wasn't sure.  We passed the lake and started down the pavement and sure enough it wouldn't shift up right, it seemed stuck in 4th and once in awhile 5th, it's an 8-speed transmission.  Hmmm?  We stopped to have coffee along the creek and took a look for the first time under the truck. Wow, it looked like cement in our wheel wells, and all over the running boards and all over the underside of the truck!  We were planning to stop at a car wash anyway, now it was imperative, the flag gal was right.  We got back to Gunnison, never would go higher than 5th gear and pulled into the car wash.  It took forever to get this stuff off, it stuck like glue!  We spent almost 45 minutes spraying the truck, what a mess.  No we will NOT go on if we see that they are applying magnesium chloride to the roads again.  I wondered if getting all the crap off the wheels, wheel wells, brake rotors, etc might have an effect on the shifting, well it did.  As we made our way to our campsite about 20 miles, it got better and better until it was shifting fine.  Happy days!

Now we are up in Fruita, just north of Grand Junction, frying.  It's in the high 90's, hit a 100 a couple times, so our air conditioners are working full time.  We are here for a couple days just chilling mostly before we work our way to the Salt Lake City area.