Cross country trip continues through Colorado

I think when I left off, we had just arrived at I-70 again after our disappointing attempt to cross Rocky Mountain National Park by road shortly following an early summer snowstorm. We still had a lot of daylight hours left and a resolve to see as much of the park that we had driven so far to see as possible. As we drove past the little town of Idaho Springs, my husband made up his mind to attempt the park from the western side at the Grand Lake entrance. I don't think he really expected to go all the way through considering what we had heard earlier in the day. (The road was only closed from Rainbow Curve to Milner Pass, that's only about 10 miles of road.)

We turned off of I-70 just a few minutes after we go on it and headed up Rte 40. I'm glad we got the chance to take this extra side trip, even if it didn't happen quite the way we'd envisioned. We drove through the town of Empire, CO and I don't remember much about it except that it was a little before Berthoud Pass (our first introduction to Rocky Mountain passes.) The closer we got to the pass, the worse the weather got. Ice and snow and wind made me very nervous. As a southern girl, I'm used to flat land that receives snow maybe once a year or so. I was pretty jumpy everytime we went around a curve or passed another car and my knuckles got progressively paler with the climbing altitude and my tightening grip on the 'oh sh--' handles. When we stopped at the Berthoud Pass parking lot overlook I was extremely thankful that the park rangers had closed the pass to vehicle traffic! There wasn't as much snow as I thought there would be, but it was enough to let the kids out for a minute to play before continuing. I'd like to tell you that the view was spectacular with stunning Colorado mountain vistas, but there was no view at all due to the snow and low-hanging clouds.

We left Berthoud Pass and continued north through Winter Park. I had never been here before, but my husband had taken a ski trip here when he was in high school. We could see that most of the snow on the slopes had melted, but we pulled into the parking lot and he pointed out a few of his favorite runs to me. We also stopped at a gas station to pick up the a few items to snack on for lunch. Then we continued on north. Everytime we came to a new town I remember saying that I'd love to live there. Each little town seemed to have so much charm! We didn't stop again though until we got to the Grand Lake Entrance.

I'm sorry to cut this short again. My daughter just got home from school and wants to 'do something.' I'm going to have to go and make sure that I approve of whatever the 'something' is. I promise that we will make it out of Colorado sometime in the next few days... Come to think of it, Colorado is not a bad place to be 'stuck'!