Grand Junction and Fruita

We headed for Grand Junction after Crested Butte and we've had nothing but beautiful weather ever since!

But before that here are some photos from Crested Butte that I didn't include in the last post:

Luke got snowed on while on a trail up on a ridge in this area. I stayed down lower and just got rained on.  

The first night we spent in Fruita we stayed at a campground with these adorable bunnies :

There was also this unusual grass. You can see what it looks like when closed in the background.

The campground was beside a dinosaur museum (I love dinos!!) and this area in general has had numerous dino fossil discoveries. I love dinos so much that this is pretty much how I see myself:

We also stayed at the Island Acres campground in Palasade CO. This is one of the views:

The Colorado River was on the other side. Such a beautiful spot!
We spent some time on the Palasade Rim Trail. Here's a view from part of the trail:

Pretty flowers on the trail

There was also petroglyphs on some of the rocks.

Even though there is a sign asking people to respect the petroglyphs and not to touch the rocks, people had scratched such things as 'Hi' and happy faces onto them. At first I was annoyed but then I thought about how, although it is pretty garbage art in my eyes, those people had done what our ancestors had done. Who am I to judge?

We also drove up to the Grand Mesa, which is the largest flat-top mountain in the world! We went there at the advice of a lovely couple from Whitehorse that we met at the campground. The first time they made the drive up the roads had gotten very slippery so they had to turn around and had a hard time coming back down. The snow and ice had mostly melted over the next couple of days though, so they made it all the way up on their next attempt.

I was so impressed with how many lakes and forests there are--you'd never expect it given the desert you find down below. Here's the view from the trailhead of our bike ride up there:

And this the view from part way up:

We also had an amazing sunset:

You can see one of the many patches of snow in this shot. It was chilly, but worth it for the view!

Our bike ride was mostly flat and easily, with some muddy bits and some patches of snow on the trail to bike through. We came up to a look-out point that was at the edge of a large field, with a smallish bit of woods to the side. Just as we arrived, a huge 500+ black bear emerged from the trees about 100 metres away and was heading straight for us! Luke yelled out and the bear turned around and ran in the opposite direction, so we were fine...but it freaked me out all the same.  I've never been that close to that big of a bear in the middle of nowhere before. Luke was just starting to record the view when this all happened, so we have it on video. I'll post it next time so you can see the incredible landscape and hear the yelling :)