Day 24, Fruita, CO, to Raton, NM

After a light breakfast, we headed to Grand Junction to pick up US-50. The drive down the Grand Valley was beautiful under partly cloudy skies with darker clouds in the distance. At Montrose, we had a second breakfast. Then we drove to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. We spent a couple of hours stopping at some of the view points and enjoying the views. The rock wall in the picture is about as tall as two Empire State buildings stacked one on top of the other. We then drove on east on US-50 to Gunnison and had a quick lunch. After lunch we drove over Monarch Pass in intermittent rain. The other picture shows the rain and storm clouds as we approached Monarch Pass. We followed US-50 down along the Arkansas River to Texas Creek where we took CO-69 toward Walsenburg. Unfortunately I made a wrong turn in Westcliffe and we went about 10 miles before I realized my mistake. We drove back to Westcliffe in a heavy thunderstorm. It was so heavy that we almost had to stop. We took the correct turn in Westcliffe and continued on CO-69 to Walsenburg. The drive on CO-69 was beautiful. In Walsenburg we picked up Interstate 25 to Raton, NM, arriving late for us (about 7:00pm).