A Scenery-laden day of riding with Rich K.

 Wow, what a great day of riding today.  Rich K on his dual sport and myself on the TW200.

Rich showed me awesome views of the Gunnison Gorge Wilderness, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison's Rim Drive, Buckskin Pass and finally Needle Rock!

The way to the three overlooks that showed me the following awesome views of the Gunnison Gorge's Conservation area and Wilderness Area is to remain undisclosed but here's what I saw:

A bit of imagery overload you say?  Well, stand by for more!

We next made our way to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park and proceeded on to its North Rim Drive, the following pictures don't even come close to doing justice to the majesty of the canyon that we saw.

The Kneeling Camel

Soon after leaving the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, we made our way to Buckskin Pass which crosses a couple of small hills as one approaches Needle Rock:

I've been to Needle Rock on a previous outing to Hotchkiss: LINK.  Here's a view of this cool looking rock formation:

We arrived back at Rich K's home with almost 100 miles of riding on the trip meters!  Yagi rendered 75 MPG today, not too shabby.

Tomorrow I displace east/south east....more to follow.

A ride to view the Gunnison Gorge Eagle Rock Shelter Petroglyphs

 A pretty good sunrise today, with a few clouds reflecting the rising sun and some rays as well.

Spent the morning doing some light maintenance and RV related chores.  After lunch, Rich K. rode to my campsite and we spent some time perusing maps he'd brought, planning tomorrow's riding.

Then, we got on our dual sports and criss-crossed the Eagle Rock Shelter area, exploring trails where we found them, and just simply enjoying the riding on pretty easy dirt trails.  Rich mentioned the petroglyphs were worth the short but steep hiking so after he went home, I returned to the site to check it out.

Yep, a bit steep on the way down towards the rock shelter where the petroglyphs were found; but not too bad.  Coming back up was another story, had to stop and rest once to catch my breath.

Here's views of the rock shelter, the signs are sun-faded and basically unreadable in terms of the description of the petroglyphs themselves.

Here's the ones I managed to find, there were pretty hard to see/spot.  I zoomed in on the ones I found and then boosted the contrast heavily to make the petroglyphs/pictographs? stand out more.

The petroglyphs have been dated to be almost13,000 years old!  Here's a link to a pretty good writeup in a Rock Art Blog.

I returned to camp and got a pic of the nearby mountain peaks:

Mount Lamborn on the left and Landsend Peak on the right.

Stay tuned, more riding tomorrow, on trails I've not been on yet, trails that should provide a view into the Gunnison Gorge Wilderness if I can hack it on the trails.

Now boondocking within the Gunnison Gorge NCA

 By 9AM, I was basically alone in the Delta County Fairgrounds once again.  All the rally attendees had departed for home and the rally was over.

Spent the rest of the morning just relaxing in the newly returned solitude.  Closer to lunch, I decided that since no riding was planned for the afternoon, might as well displace to the boondocking spot I'd spotted and checked out in the last couple of days.

Camp set up was under mostly cloudy skies, and thereby nicely cool temperatures.  Oh, and it was a bit windy but not bad.  Being situated between two dirt mounds helped cut down the wind's effect as well.

This spot isn't on my usual go-to app for locating boondocking locations.  I'd seen some existing fire rings while riding about the northern portion of the NCA and thereby it met all the requirements for dispersed camping site within BLM managed lands.

Here's a view of part of the dirt road that leads to the top of the hill on which the campsite is located.

After dinner, I rode Yagi along the Eagle Rock Shelter Loop, taking pics of the eroded rock formations that are part of the Gunnison Gorge NCA.

Can you spot Uma in the above picture?

How about now?

A view, similar to a previous posting's pic, but with the setting sun's coloration of the rocks rendering them warmer to the eye.

Shooting to the west, I liked the way the rock formations seemed to float in the haze.

Sunset on Sunday:

Yep, still a lot of haze and smoke from forest fires in the air.

I'll be here probably till Wednesday morning, it all depends on what kind of riding I can get in with Rich K. who lives in Hotchkiss.