New Year, Same Blog
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!
December was kind of a sh*t show with work stress and the busyness of the season, so I’m just going to skip right over all of that and inundate you with photos and recaps from our recent adventures. However, I will say that Ian and I both are going to make a much more concerted effort in 2023 not to let the drudgery of the day-to-day drag us down. Work is work. Work is not your whole life.
Over Thanksgiving Ian and I went to Zion National Park, the only national park in Utah that we had yet to visit. Over Christmas we road tripped through Colorado to visit all four of the national parks there. In between those trips, we managed to squeeze in a few fun things. Ian snowboarded pretty regularly, and I did some snowshoeing and started dabbling in cross country skiing again. We watched a ton of football, ate more than our fair share of holiday treats, and acquired a delightful collection of Don James holiday cards.
My sisters also proved to be terrible at communicating with each other but great at gift giving with an overwhelming response to my Christmas request for a “Maryland themed winter hat.”
I’m going to post about both trips but probably make it two posts in reverse chronological order. I know it’s been forever since my last post. If ever there’s a big gap in posts like that, it’s safe for you to assume that I am stressed out and not doing the best mental health wise. It’s a work in progress, and that’s okay. Now, for the content you’ve been waiting for!
Colorado Christmas Road Trip Recap
Road Trip Stop #1 - Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park
We kicked off our Colorado Christmas road trip by driving from our house in Utah to Montrose, CO on Friday morning. The whole drive took 6+ hours, but we made it to our Air B&B, a tiny house cabin in an RV park (not a ton of options in Montrose in the off season, but it worked out for one night). We went to a neat little pizza place in town, watched The Grinch, and that’s about all we did in Montrose.
The next morning we drove a whole 30 minutes to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. The main scenic road is closed in winter but groomed for cross country skiing and snowshoeing. We rented cross country skis from REI before we left Utah, which was a great move on our part. We ended up skiing 12 miles along the road at the park, which had a bunch of overlooks along the way. This was on Christmas Eve in what’s already not a super popular park, so we saw only a handful of people the entire time we were there.
We had the sunrise overlook all to ourselves.
Cross country skiing 12 miles is exhausting!
There’s a river down there at the bottom of the canyon, which was formed through what used to be volcanoes. Year after year, the river keeps cutting through the rock and making the chasm even deeper.
Black Canyon NP in a summary: huge beautiful rocks with deep slices in between
After a day of skiing, we hop back in the car for the four hour drive in the snow to Dillon, CO. Some of the most amazing views from our trip came right from the car as we drove from place to place. This particular drive ended up in a snowstorm in the dark, but we made it to our destination (shout out to the Best Western) safe and sound.
In addition to the beautiful scenery, some other notable sights from this portion of the road trip include two field of heron, a yak, an alpaca farm, a buffalo farm, and a butt load of cows.
Road Trip Stop #2 - Rocky Mountain National Park
On Christmas Day, we started off with a fun FaceTime call with my family from the Best Western in Dillon, CO. This was accompanied by some amazing sunrise views of the frozen Dillon Reservoir right behind the hotel.
Most people associate Rocky Mountain NP with the east side of the park in Estes Park, CO. However, the road that cuts through the park to get from the Estes Park side to the western side in Grand Lake, CO is closed in the winter. We were not about to take the three hour detour around the entire park to get to the more popular side, so we stuck with the Kawuneeche Valley aka the moose capitol of Rocky Mountain NP.
It’s a proper white Christmas winter wonderland.
Rocky Mountain snowshoe adventures. Not featured in the photo are about a million moose tracks.
I fell. Not featured is the moose in the woods behind us that we noticed when I dug myself out.
We finish our snowshoe hike and are in the parking lot at the car not even long enough to take our snowshoes off and two moose come right out of the woods behind us.
There was a sign posted on the trailhead that said watch out for moose in the parking lot, so I guess we should have anticipated this.
One of the moose set up shop behind that Rav 4 there on the left licking the snow off the car.
We determined that the moose were trying to lick the salt off the ground under the snow. The butt to the sky method was definitely unique to see.
Total Christmas moose count: 3
Ian likes to take photos of his car looking majestic in the snow.
Day two in Rocky Mountain NP brought more snowshoeing and more moose.
Wildfires suck.
I fell again.
Other highlights of the Rocky Mountain NP/Grand Lake/Frisco/Dillon part of our trip include:
Seeing five moose in one day at Rocky Mountain NP
Cross country skiing at the Frisco Nordic Center, where we saw plenty of moose tracks but no actual moose
Fantastic food
The general beauty and ambiance of the scenery
After a few more days in winter wonderland, we headed south for Alamosa, CO.
From winter wonderland to the desert
This is getting to be the world’s longest post, so I think I’m going to end it here and post the rest of the trip photos in a different post. Stay tuned for more quality Colorado content, and thank you for reading!
