The Grandeur of Grand Mesa

We had never heard of the Grand Mesa before arriving in this part of Colorado, but this is the world’s largest flat top mountain.   We took this picture on the mesa, and for the first time we don’t have any mountains poking up above it.

That's because this mountain doesn't come to a point--it's 40 miles wide at the top.  This flat mesa  was formed from hard volcanic rock.  This hard rock also has indentations that hold water, so there are over 350 lakes on the top of the Grand Mesa.  Once again, we have found another one of God's wonders.

We stopped into the Mesa Lakes recreation area and took a look at Sunset Lake.  At 10,000 feet in elevation, this Grand Mesa is another great cool spot for the month of August.  We were wearing long sleeves because the temperatures were in the 60’s today.

There were beautiful lakes nestled all along the bench of the Grand Mesa.

When we walked just 100 yards further into the forest, there was another lake, and another lake, and another lake.  Most of them are filled with fish, as evidenced by all the circles left from the fish hitting the top of the water.

Lots of fishermen know this is a great place to go trout fishing.  We figured it should also be a great place to go kayaking.  So we headed down the road to the Mesa Visitor’s Center to ask for advice on the best lake on the Grand Mesa to put our kayak in for a spin.  

Island Lake was their recommendation, so that’s where we kayaked on this cloudy and cool afternoon.

True to its name, there is really an island (or actually two) in the middle of the lake.

It was also recommended that we shouldn’t miss the drive to “Land’s End.”  Twelve miles on gravel roads later, we arrived at an old ranger station with views 5,000 feet down where the mesa ended. 

We could see the San Juan mountains, now 70 miles away.   We could also see the La Sal mountain range in Utah where we will be headed soon.

We could also see a ground squirrel finishing up a peach that someone had left.  Judging from the amount of sunflower seeds littering the viewpoint, these ground squirrels have been well fed from the tourists.

To our north we could see the city of Grand Junction.  Several days ago we took pictures of the Book Cliffs from the bottom as we drove by on the interstate.  Now we were picturing them from the top.

We drove across the flat Grand Mesa to get to the Land’s End Observatory, but there is another route to arrive at this point.  In the picture below you can see the narrow serpentine gravel road that cars can drive all the way up from the Gunnison River Valley.

We drove the entire 63 miles of the Grand Mesa Scenic Byway, and then down to Cederedge and Eckert in search of more peaches.  We might be addicted to fresh Colorado peaches!  It was a great day on the Grand Mesa, where we never broke a sweat on this cool day in August.