Wednesday Jul 3, 2024 Creede CO to Gunnison CO

Another quiet night in Marshall Park Campground. We made coffee and tea and drove over the mountain to Lake City and had breakfast at the Breakfast Hangout and Euphoria since the line at the Lake City Bakery was out the door and across the driveway. Turned out Breakfast Hangout was wonderful and it was staffed by 4 or 5 J-1 students here for the summer from Bulgaria and Dominican Republic and Slovakia. We had a nice chat with a few of them and the coffee was bottomless and the pancakes and frittata were delicious.

We then walked to the bakery and there was no line, and the couple from Oklahoma  that we had met the day before were there, so we stopped and got a mid-morning snack (cruller) and chatted with the OK folks again. They gave us even more tips for getting through the mountains.

We continued on the Silver Thread Scenic Byway which was not very populated and not much traffic. Beautiful sunny day with big white clouds and in the 70’s. Deb had lined up a Wingate Hotel in Gunnison (with points) so we could do laundry and get showers.

We discovered that the Pioneer Museum in Gunnison is a pretty big museum and so we stopped. Wow was it huge! And very nicely put together. We spent close to two hours there and it’s so big, they let you have a return pass for the next day which we got. I think I made it through the entire thing but only by taking quick looks through each building. Wow.

Gunnison is not what we were expecting. It’s a pretty normal working town, not a big resort town at all. Big enough for a small Walmart but we did not see any other box stores.

We then decided we would drive the 30 or so miles up to Crested Butte and back just to go to the visitor center there and ask about the roads over the mountains. Crested Butte is a big, resort town with lots of fancy stores and a big Arts Center. Kind of richy-rich stuff. The visitor center volunteer said either road to the east or the west over the mountains was fine for our two wheeled drive van. So we have options tomorrow.

Then back to Gunnison where we found a car wash our high top van would fit in, and hosed most of the 100 pounds of mud that was caked on the sides of our van from yesterday's travels. Then to the motel and did some laundry.

Later we walked downtown and had a good taco salad dinner at El Paraiso Mexican Restaurant. After a stroll around town back to the hotel for reading and bed.