The forecasted storm arrived with snow and strong winds that rocked the LTV all night. We woke to cold (22F) snow, wind and frozen everything. I went out of the LTV and the step froze, the door would not latch and our water pipes were frozen.
We could wait it out or move on, I am not know for my patience, we took our time but hit the road about 9AM.
The roads were horrible, but the worst thing was the wind which would literally push you over to the other lane and there was nothing you could do but slow to a crawl at times. Luckily there was no traffic because at times the visibility went to near zero.
I looked at the weather before we left and it looked like we would drive out of the snow in about 100 miles but the wind was going to be with us until the afternoon. It was hard to go over 30 mph, so it was a long 100 miles.
Kansas is huge, it goes on forever with just nothing, gas stops are 50 miles apart, it is impressive.
We eventually made our way to Colorado which looks a lot like Kansas for the first 100 miles or so. We also crossed another time zone so were in Mountain Time. We stopped for lunch around 1PM (my stomach said 2PM) and when we got back on the road, like a switch the wind turned off. The MB was happy and I got cruise control back.
As we made our way west we started hitting the Co mountains, the first was the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and we crossed via La Veta Pass which is 9,426 ft in elevation. At the top of the pass we heard a loud pop in the back of the LTV, June found a bag of Doritos had suffered an embolism. We packed that bag of chips at home at around 150 ft in elevation.
We made our second pass at Wolf Creek which crosses the continental divide at 10,856 ft. It was a beautiful drive with steep climbs and descents. It was cold at the top of the pass but once we descended the temperatures got above freezing.
We made a stop at the Great Dunes National Park. It is an interesting place where huge sand dunes form between the mountains. There was alot of snow but the roads were clear.
The dunes were completely covered in snow. I said to the ranger, I guess we picked a bad time to visit, he replied "well the people this morning could not see anything, it was a blizzard and you are lucky to see them covered in snow, not many people see that"....our cup is half full.
They are beautiful but we would have like to hike them.
We decided to make our way closer to Arches National Park, we have no reservations so will be winging it a bit there.
While on the road, June booked a campground in Bayfield, Co (Just outside Durango) for $40, just for a place to park for the night. When we arrived it was 40F, nice, the LTV thawed out so we took showers and prepared for an early departure on Tuesday to Arches.
It was a stressful travel day. Too bad the dunes were covered in snow. :(
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