Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

At the end of our summer vacation, we met my parents in Montrose, Colorado to see the Black Canyon together. The main thing we did at the park was a boat tour of the canyon (The tour was technically located in Curecanti National Recreation Area. Part of the Canyon is in the national park and the rest is a national recreation area). We hiked down to the Gunnison river and followed the river to the boat dock. We ate lunch at a nice picnic shelter near the dock:

The park rangers made sure we all got life-jackets. Henry was not super thrilled with his.

Then we started the tour. It's a very pretty canyon.

Henry's favorite part seemed to be the roof of the boat.

After the boat tour, we drove over to the visitor's center for Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

In the visitor's center, we watched a movie on the history of the canyon, both its natural history and the "taming" of the canyon and the harnessing of the water of the Gunnison River. And, of course, I bought books from the NPS bookstore. James and Thomas did the Junior Ranger program again at this park. They picked up the junior ranger booklets for Curecanti NRA too, but we didn't have time for them to finish both.

This is the visitor's center as seen from the overlook we walked to:

Dad had checked out the overlook while the boys were doing their junior ranger stuff, so he watched Henry while the rest of us hiked down to the overlook.

The way that the late afternoon sunshine filtered through the canyon was so pretty. It's so hard to capture on film the panoramic views of a canyon in the way you see them in person. Especially not with a point and shoot camera! So, this picture is a poor representation of how gorgeous Black Canyon is, but it's the best I've got.

The overlook, as seen from the porch of the visitor's center: