THE END: Morrow Point Boat Tour

Today seems like a perfect day to go back to Blue Mesa / Black Canyon and take the Morrow Point Boat tour.

We've been warned that the trail down has 236 steps down.

So we start the trek down - we don't need no stinkin stairmaster!

Once we reach the River it is another mile or so to the Boat.

We had a picnic lunch before boarding and this chipmunk thought we might share

Here comes the 10 a.m. boat back. Time to turn around.

It is a ranger lead ride. It's a 41 Passenger boat and there are about 8 of us on board.

A different perspective from down here.

We pass a small waterfall. Chipeta Falls, drops about 150-160 feet off of the canyon wall.

According to Rudyard Kipling , who rode the train through the canyon in 1889: "We entered a gorge, remote from the sun, where the rocks were two thousand feet sheer, and where a rock splintered river roared and howled ten feet below a track which seemed to have been built on the simple principle of dropping miscellaneous dirt into the river and pinning a few rails a-top. There was a glory and a wonder and a mystery about the mad ride, which I felt keenly…until I had to offer prayers for the safety of the train" Avalanches and rock falls were common and an engineer and his crew never knew if or when their train would be the next to be swept into the icy waters of the Gunnison River.

Lush, Green Kokanee Bay is the turn-around point for the Boat Tour

The trail along the side of the river was the old Denver Rio Grande Western Railroad narrow gauge rail bed. The Curecanti Needle is a 700 hundred feet A-shaped rock formation that was part of the Rail Road's Logo.