Grand Mesa, Colorado

We awoke this morning and after a leisurely breakfast we headed for Palisade, a little town east of Grand Junction. There is a farmers market on Sunday morning and we wanted to get some fresh fruit; there is a lot of fruit in this part of Colorado, the Grand Valley. After finding our fruit and some tasty cookies we then toured several of the area wineries. We tasted wine until we found several we liked. We'll be taking a few bottles back to Arizona in the late fall to share with our wine tasting party friends!

Before getting too light headed on the wine we headed for Grand Mesa. Grand Mesa is billed as the "largest flattop mountain in the world". We can't confirm that but it is large. Grand Mesa provides a lot of water for Western Colorado. We had great views overlooking forests and lakes. The scenic road across the mesa climbs about 6,000 feet above the surrounding area; we were close to 11,000 feet above sea level at one point. The Scenic Byway is 63 miles in length so we had a nice drive through a magical alpine area. We saw lots of beautiful flowers, lakes, rocks, and trees. The panoramas were magnificent. We could see forever! Today was one of the few days that we didn't see any animals but the habitat was there and the animals were out of the heat as it was another warm day.

In the morning we will head for Montrose, Colorado, and The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.