1344 miles from home.
Today’s road trip consisted entirely of I-70 across Colorado. Normally I consider Interstate driving the epitome of boredom, but this drive was anything but. When you start in Grand Junction the north side of the road is shadowed by 1,000′ mesas and soon that is joined by mesas on the other side. The road slowly rises in altitude and the flat tops turn into peaks. Now you are in a narrow valley twisting between mountains and the road keeps rising. Most of the time the pass is filled only with the Colorado River, I-70 and a set of train tracks.
We had originally intended to take I-70 partway and then dip down south following another route that would take us into Colorado Springs for the night. Try as I might using Google maps I could not change the route to go through Aspen. I checked road conditions and found out why, the road was still closed for the season. We then planned a slightly different route, but as it turned out we didn’t use that either. We only made it to Glenwood Springs (less than halfway) by lunchtime due to our usual late start and bush beating adventures, so the decision was made to just stay on I-70.
Donna decided that she wanted to help out driving, but she picked an inopportune time, soon the climbing got serious, there were numerous spots for trucks to pull over to put on their chains. We think that the road actually had 3 lanes as it wound it way upward, but the lines were worn off and there were deep ruts from said trucks and chains. She found a sort of sweet spot, but the slower trucks and faster cars made her nervous. Ever the trooper she made it to the next place where there was a rest stop and pulled in to let me drive, the top of Vail Pass at 10,600′. We used the restrooms before changing drivers and that in itself was an experience. There was snow piled 5-6′ high from clearing the parking lot and the facilities themselves were cave like as snow still covered almost all of the buildings windows.
From there the road smoothed out and the elevation actually dropped for awhile before starting to climb to the Eisenhower tunnels at over 11,000′. Once through the tunnels the road turned downward dropping to a more civil seven thousand feet or so and then dropping into Denver.
Four for four on caches today. That total might have been a few higher, but the route change removed quite a few from our list.
P.S. Can you tell by the length of this post that I had a bit more time to write about our day tonight than I have had the last couple?