#22-The Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

One ride we definitely wanted to do before leaving Colorado was the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Park located between Montrose and Gunnison. Two different groups of motorcyclists we talked with said it was a must ride....a low traffic road with some of the most beautiful scenery the state has to offer. 

We started the day under cloudy skies but the views were still breathtaking. Just as a point of information, it's called the Black Canyon because some of the deepest, most narrow parts of it get only 33 minutes of sunshine a day. With it being in shadow all that time, it appears 'black.' The road rises above the Gunnison River and twists and turns around corners that always give a surprise. Our most fun one was a mother bear and her two cubs! It happened way too fast for a camera but we both got a good look at them. Before mother hustled them away, one little guy actually stood on his two hind feet, with his shoulders back, looking right at us. He was almost asking, "Who are you guys and what are you doing here?" What a thrill for us. 

On the way back down the mountain, in the rain and around the twists and turns, the trike started making a terrible grinding, clunking noise. We had this one other time early on in our trip, but it went away after a very short time and never returned until now. We had no cell service, no internet so Rick slowly started taking us down. After about a mile, the noise went away. We held our breath the whole way back into Gunnison and the trike ran perfectly the entire time. Regardless, we stopped at a motorcycle service shop the first chance we got and the very kind serviceman there dropped everything he was doing to check out the trike. Rick didn't think he would find anything and after a good 30 minutes with it, he came out and told us exactly that. He could find nothing wrong. Without going deeper and starting to take things apart, there was not much more he could do for us. If he did start tearing it down, getting parts could be a problem and we might be looking at a couple of weeks downtime. He was fairly sure it wasn't going to leave us stranded. So.....we headed back over Monarch Pass to the campground and decided then and there that it was time for us to head for home. The logistics of getting the trike and trailer home if the trike went down were pretty complicated. So, our mantra became....we'll just take it one mile at a time. 

Nervous trails.