Grand Mesa, Colorado

In the nine years of living in the Southwest, we’ve explored a lot of ground. We’ve seen much of Colorado, our neighbor to the north. But one area we had not seen was Grand Mesa, in the western part of the state. So last week we took a trip to see it.

First, we had to get there. We generally like to drive to a destination one way, and travel back another so we aren’t backtracking and seeing the same scenery twice. The most direct and quickest way to Grand Mesa was up U.S. 550 — on the spectacular Million Dollar Highway.

On many people’s lists of the scariest roads in America, the two-lane mountainous stretch of U.S. 550 between the towns of Silverton and Ouray is not for the faint of heart. The section through the Uncompahgre Gorge and up to the summit of Red Mountain Pass is challenging and potentially hazardous to drive. It is characterized by steep cliffs, narrow lanes and a lack of guardrails. There’s a reason many of the hairpin curves have a speed limit of 10 mph.

We had taken this road once before, while driving our old Sportsmobile, and learned then that if we drive this road, we only wanted to travel south to north, keeping our vehicle on the inside lane, closer to the mountain than to the cliff edges on the outside lane (and we don’t ever want to drive it in either direction in the rain or in winter!).

This short video gives you a sense of the drive through the gorge:

Thankfully, the drive didn’t seem as scary as the first time we drove it. I had promised Todd that I wouldn’t freak out and make him more nervous while driving, and I really didn’t!

We continued north to Grand Mesa, which we could see from miles away. Covering roughly 540 square miles and rising to more than 11,000 feet in elevation, it is the largest flat-top mountain in the world. The views from the top were amazing.

The Grand Mesa Scenic Byway leads through old-growth forests, aspens, meadows and numerous stream-fed alpine lakes. The mesa boasts 300 lakes and reservoirs in total (they must count even the smaller-looking ponds), but we stayed mostly to the byway and saw about 15-20 perhaps. For fishermen, this place is paradise.

We camped adjacent to Cobbett Lake for two nights at a primitive campsite. There was a path through the woods to the visitor center, where we had our only access to a cell signal. Koda was in heaven with the cooler weather and new smells. She was on squirrel and chipmunk watch the entire time, guarding our camp from the pesky critters. She also cried in excitement at seeing a few deer prance right through our campground the first night.

More photos of Koda’s adventures:

Once atop the mesa, there are a couple of places that rent rustic cabins (see here and here), and those are the only places that offer a restaurant. There are no gas stations on the mesa, so we had to get gas in the valley below.

We drove out the northern entrance of the mesa down to the town of Grand Junction one day. We had an excellent lunch at the Rockslide Restaurant & Brewery. After getting gas and picking up some supplies in town, we headed back up to the mesa.

On this day trip, we saw mountain goats on the road in the valley, and a bear up on the mesa while driving back. Of course by the time I could get my cell phone out, I only captured the back of the bear as it retreated from the road. But it was exciting to see! We were told there were some moose in the area by a cluster of lakes, but we did not see them.

Can you spot the bear in this photo?

The last night, we camped at Ward Lake and were visited by a magnificent fox who came right by our camp in the evening and then again in the morning. What a treat!

Fortunately the mosquitos we were expecting were mostly already gone for the season. We hear in summer, they come at you in swarms. And while we were a bit too early for the changing leaves, the opportunity to unplug, relax and enjoy nature was all we wanted.

The sunrise from the lake was beautiful, but meant an impending storm was coming in later. We left the mesa and drove home down the back side of Telluride, where indeed, we did see some rain.