Winter Park to Colorado Springs

Woke up early enough on the 21st to get our free "continental" breakfast… but continental breakfast here in the US means bagels, pastries and coffee; in other words a very American breakfast, and not at all European! But as I woke up I head a strange tinkling sound on the window outside, so thinking it might be rain I pulled the curtains and was greeted by a winter wonderland; it was snow-hailing outside! I say snow-hailing because it was hail shaped, but coming down in flurries like snow. So we got our breakfast and watched the snow outside.

Packed up and loaded up the car; by now there was a good inch of fresh snow (it was proper-snowing now) on top of the mud on our car.

So I wiped off all the snow from the windows and tried to drive off, but only got half way up the block before I had to pull in and clear everything again. The lack of rear-window wiper was very frustrating as I couldn't see anything behind me at all. The wipers meanwhile kept on icing up and so didn't do a very good job of wiping the window clean. Took a bit of work but we got up to Winter Park proper after a while.

Crossing the bridge, snow quite deep here / West entrance to the Moffat Tunnel, which carries the D&RG under the Rockies

I had wanted to come up here anyway to ride their summer luge, but sadly this wasn't going to be an option today. In fact the entire Winter Park resort seemed to be closed due to the snow; note the irony there. We pressed on to the summit where we had a bit of a play in the snow and watched some dogs fooling around.

11,307 ft elevation at the summit, and snowing heavily.

Snow coated pine trees on the way up, like something out of an xmas card / Dogs frisking in the snow.

Once everyone had gone I had a bit of a skid around the car park on the way out, and then had the pleasure of the car insisting on ABS while braking at walking pace on the way out. I'm starting to realise this car isn't really designed for American conditions: gutless on the hills, no rear wiper, pretty poor handling in the snow. Then again it is a Hyundai so not surprising it isn't tuned for US conditions. By now at least the windscreen had warmed up enough that the wipers weren't really needed.

The drive up had been fairly gradual, but once over the summit the road flung itself down the hill in a series of tight switchbacks, which made the ears pop a lot.

Just can't get enough of the snow on the conifers!

As the air warmed little bits of snow would fly off the bonnet and over the windscreen which was quite fun to watch. Slowly the switchbacks eased out. As we cruised down one switchback I suddenly noticed a deer standing at the side of the road! I made ooo ooo ooo oooo noises while pointing wildly to get Ange's attention and slamming on the brakes (no one behind me) but just as we neared her she dashed back into the woods. We stopped and ran back looking for her but all we could find were some tracks in the roadside mud. We keep seeing signs with little dancing deer and moose pictograms, but I was never sure how serious they were. Guess they're halfway accurate – our deer definitely wasn't dancing, just quietly observing the traffic.

After a while on US40 we passed the little town of Berthound Falls and saw a general store with the sign: "The Last General Store; nothing fancy, just what you need" which I thought was cute. Looked like it'd been hand painted too. US40 then turned into a quiet I70, then I70 slowly grew in size and then we started a steep downhill section and the road signs became quite chatty. Things like "Truckies: long down hill stretch ahead, are your brakes cool and operational?", "Truckiers: it's not over yet, another 4 miles left", and "Truckies: don't be fooled, another 3 miles of steep grades to go". Once at the bottom Denver itself started, and wow is Denver big. We couldn't see much from our concrete I70 jungle, but it looked like it stretched on forever! I guess after the Rockies anything large than a hamlet boggles the imagination.

Meanwhile I trying my best to navigate into Denver, but the directions were coming at me lightening fast, and in between navigating across 3 lanes into the off ramp, choosing the right lane, then exiting into the left lane to get into I25S I made a mistake and ended up on I25N. RATS! U turns are impossible on an Interstate, so I ended up driving for an extra 5 minutes through all manner of flyovers before I got back where I'd started. Pretty frustrating, and somehow I think I drove through every set of road works in Denver. Some of the Interstates and state highways in Denver are really rough with all sorts of lumps and bumps and this clever thing they call "grooved pavement" which looks like someone has taken an industrial sized cheese grater to the road; feels like it too!

So in the pouring rain I'm busy navigating the deepest darkest reaches of the Denverian roading system; yup was pretty fun! Poor GPS was getting a bit of abuse too; every time she says take a left I get confused and take a right, which may sound dumb but in NZ a left turns is an "easy" turn, while in the US a left turn means crossing opposing traffic, and for whatever reason I've associated left turns with easy turns, and right turns with hard turns, and even after 3 weeks of driving I'm still doing it! Hence why I ended up in the wrong lane heading the wrong way in Denver.

But eventually I pulled into a parking lot across the road from Caboose Hobbies; the world's largest model train shop! So it wasn't all in vain. Spent a good few hours there and bout a lot of N scale stuff. I had to laugh that they had shopping baskets for customers, and sales people who roamed the isles (and actually knew what they were talking about). So I now have a nice set of Amtrak carriages and loco, and a nice BC Rail loco in a striking blue/silver/white scheme.

Colorado Springs

Left there and headed south, back on the I25 again. Struck heavy rain; there is something scary about doing 75mph (120kmh) in pouring rain, and having cars whizz past you doing a lot more then 75mph! Arrived in Colorado Springs an hour later and found that it's a lot bigger than I thought. Went to the info centre after some creative driving, and found out it's almost tied for population with Denver itself. Only some measly 2-3% of Colorado lives in the Rockies. Such a shame.

Went looking for a motel, found a decent one after some quick hunting. Looked ok from the road but was in a run down part of town so we asked to see the room first, and it was actually really nice inside! Smelled the nicest of any of our rooms so far (i.e. it smelled of nothing). It's so hard knowing where to start in a city of several million people! I'd heard that the "evening entertainment" here was quite interesting, but with the temps so low (almost freezing point) and a very fresh breeze blowing I figured they'd all be at home watching TV and we'd be fine. Seems I was right.

Walked to dinner 30s down the road and had a lovely Mexican meal. They were out of "real" Coke so we had Mexican Coke which is actually quite tasty (less intense flavour than regular coke) and came in cool tall skinny 1L (I think) bottles, with everything written in Spanish. We kept the bottles as a little memento of the US. Waitress was really nice and food was plentiful and cheap too.

Then it was back to the hotel to play with my trains on the desk and process photos. So not a bad day; had snow, a deer sighting, train shopping and Mexican food. And lots of driving!