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Glenwood Canyon Review
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Glenwood Canyon
- Category: Canyon
- Location: Glenwood Springs
Fodor's Review:
Along I-70 east of town is the 15-mi-long Glenwood Canyon. Nature began the work as the Colorado River carved deep granite, limestone, and quartzite gullies -- buff-tint walls brilliantly streaked with lavender, rose, and ivory. This process took a half billion years. Then man stepped in, seeking a more-direct route west. In 1992 the work on I-70 through the canyon was completed, at a cost of almost $500 million. Much of the expense was attributable to the effort to preserve the natural landscape as much as possible. When contractors blasted cliff faces, for example, they stained the exposed rock to simulate nature's weathering. Biking trails were also created, providing easy access to the hauntingly beautiful Hanging Lake Recreation Area. Here Dead Horse Creek sprays ethereal flumes from curling limestone tendrils into a startlingly turquoise pool, as jet-black swifts dart to and fro. It's perhaps the most transcendent of several idyllic spots in the canyon reachable on bike or foot. The intrepid can scale the delicate limestone cliffs, pocked with caverns and embroidered with pastel-hue gardens.
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