In Manhattan we had breakfast at the Chef, then started on through the big empty towards Denver. Just west of Manhattan there was still some contour. We saw some of the largest flocks of birds I've ever seen, and big ones, Canada geese, but also large white birds of some flavor (mmmm, birds). As we head farther west it flattens out and the most common creature we see are these large hawks, tan and brown, with a white chest. Beautiful.
There is something about west Kansas and the eastern Colorado high plains that puts Heather and I to sleep, sort of like west Texas. Nonetheless, we made good time, and made it to Ft. Collins north of Denver by dark. We had dinner at the 415 Restaurant downtown and it was excellent.
In the morning I'd planned to head back downtown for some highly rated breakfast place, but it was cold and windy and Heather wasn't feeling great, so we decided to just go to a place across the parking lot from the hotel. It turned out to be an Original Pancake House, which is kind of a weird name for a chain. It was busy but Heather's omelet was very good.
So I had wanted to take the I70 again, this time with more snow in the Rockies, but a wet snow on a huge base of powder was causing there to be avalanches everywhere around Aspen, so nope. Next we tried to take a state route along the foothills to Laramie, bypassing Cheyenne on our way to the I80, but it closed right in front of us. This confused us because the sun was shining, it was sort of warm (in the 40s, same as the day before) and the roads were dry. Hmmm. Such simple desert folk.
Well, we turned around and made our way to the I25 N to Cheyenne. Just outside town I saw a sign saying that I80 was closed, but I couldn't believe it. Yup, it was, so we started down a state route that looked like it winded around, getting us close to Laramie, but when we headed down it, we saw sign saying closed in 22 miles. After checking online as best we could, we decided to proceed down the state route, half expecting to turn around. We didn't have anything else to do.
The first 15 miles or so was clear and dry, although very blustery as the weather forecast had stated. But then we started going up into some little foothills, which had more snow, and seemed to channel the wind between them. There was snow blowing across the road, which at first doesn't seem like that big a deal. But then cars drive on it, the snow melts some, then refreezes, catching even more snow. That and no visibility. Yikes. But notice the blue skies above.
Finally we got to I80, which was closed right there heading east, but we were going the other way. There were a few more patches of blowing snow and slush and ice on the interstate heading west from there, but nothing like before.
We had dinner at the original Little America in Wyoming. As we parked Heather noted we had one headlight out. After a respectable dinner at a roadside in the middle of nowhere, and some zigs and zags from the GPS, we finally made to to Salt Lake well after dark on one headlight.
No comments:
Post a Comment