Palisade & Colorado National Monument (7/17/2016)

After watching the British Open to a disappointing finish, my guests and I decided it might be appropriate to take a drive through Colorado's wine country.  The town of Palisade is the heart of wine country here, and also has an enormous fruit industry, including peaches, apricots, apples, etc. After joining the Wine & Fruit Trail, we made a couple quick stops for buying fruit and doing a little wine tasting, leaving with a few bottles of Laughing Cat Reisling,.  The mesas surrounding this area are quite spectacular.

Next, since we were so close, we headed over to Colorado National Monument to wrap up the day.  As always, the rock formations are the stars of the show, but the many canyons that make up the monument are very scenic themselves.  At the Visitor Center, we watched a movie about the origins of the monument and saw a statue of John Otto, a man who lived in the area for many years and advocated to have the place designated as a National Park.  That never happened, but it did gain National Monument status.

One of these days, I plan to explore some of the surrounding areas, such as MacInnis Canyons and Rattlesnake Canyon, which has the most sandstone arches outside of Arches National Park.