Day Five of my trip. Sunday morning in Grand Junction and it seemed everyone with a bicycle had headed up to the National Monument to ride the rim road. And between the road, the weather, and the scenery, it was easy to see why.
I had seen these cliffs from the highway down in the valley on previous trips, but never taken the time to explore them. This is the eastern edge of the Colorado Plateau and the geology itself is the same basic layer cake seen farther west. The park is located on a north-facing break, where the sedimentary units are folded downward, exposing the underlying sequence of rocks. The most distinctive cliff-former is the Wingate Sandstone.
The rim road is just that - following the edge of the cliffs for many miles - and sometimes even excavated into the cliff. At the Visitor's Center, I picked up the most recent edition of
Roadside Geology of Colorado, figuring that even if I didn't have time to read it on this trip, maybe I could go back and sort out stuff later on.
After spending the morning here, I headed east, leaving the Colorado Plateau and heading into the Rocky Mountains.
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