Grand Junction is Grand

It's been a while since I talked about Grand Junction. It's a great place to visit, and if you're thinking about it you can check out the Visit Grand Junction site to see ideas for places to stay, places to eat, and lots of activities to do. We have lots of outdoor recreation, and in the summer our local fruit is delicious!

Grand Junction is also a great place to live. (I might be biased, I admit.) We're the largest city between Salt Lake City, Utah, and Denver, Colorado. Which means we have the benefits of a regional hub without too large a size, so if you want a hometown that's not too big and not too small, Grand Junction might be just right for you. The City of Grand Junction site is one place to look for resources about life here. And if you're looking for a home, Bray Real Estate is a fantastic resource!

Energy-Efficient Homes

What does it mean for a home to be energy-efficient? It means having a home that uses less energy to keep you comfortable: less energy to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer, less energy to light your living spaces and go about your daily life. This means lower bills for you and greater environmental sustainability.

In an existing home, you can do a home energy assessment to consider whether you'll save energy and money by improving your insulation, tuning up your heating and cooling systems, changing light bulbs and lighting systems, and other strategies. Other evaluation tools are available at the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET).

And good news for those of us here in Colorado: our listing service, MLS, is adding a field for Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Index scores, which tell you how much more or less energy efficient a specific home is, as compared to a standard new home. Read more about the HERS index here, and watch for HERS scores to show up in our listings when they're available!

Colorado National Monument

Here in Grand Junction, we are lucky enough to be close to the Colorado National Monument, which turned 100 in 2011. John Otto, an explorer who settled in Grand Junction, began building trails and lobbying for the area to become a National Park in 1907. Although it never became a National Park, the canyons became a National Monument in 1911 when President Taft issued a proclamation creating the Colorado National Monument. Locally, it's simply known as "the Monument."

Now that the Monument was official, local residents worked on putting in the Serpents Trail, which was constructed from 1912 to 1921 and offered a road for cars into the Monument. Serpents Trail is still maintained as a hiking trail in the Monument, but cars now stick to the Rim Rock Drive.

Rim Rock Drive is 23 miles long and has spectacular views of the Monument. Construction on it began in 1931, and in 1933 crew from the Civilian Conservation Corps contributed work. Sections of Rim Rock were washed out in a particularly large flash flood in 1968, but don't worry! It's all open now. The Park Service does recommend watching out for Desert Bighorn Sheep.

The Monument is one of the great places to visit in western Colorado, and a reason it's great to live in Grand Junction.