A year with my sister, a lesson in survival, sanity and/or stupidity: Caught in a snow storm then into Colorado

Left Rapid City in overcast weather. Shortly thereafter light rain fell. This rain got heavier then turned to sleet. By the time we stopped for lunch at Lusk the sleet had long turned to snow. The snow got heavier and we ran out of fingers to count the snow plows we had seen. The road was still open though so we made our way to Cheyenne. At one point both lanes of the Interstate were covered in snow and we had to drive in the emergency lane. Called in at an Exxon gas station and discovered that an unexpected storm had hit and a winter storm warning was in place and an advisory not to travel unless absolutely necessary.

That made our decision to go no further easier. Finding a parking space in the gas station was a bit trickier – every trucker and his dog seemed to have the same idea. Eventually found ourselves a nice little spot by the workshop and, immediately after parking up, had two trucks next to us. Definitely a night for moonshine … but only because we have no mulled wine (and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything).

Next morning the sun was shining and the snow and ice began to melt. We took refuge in the diner attached to the gas station to recharge batteries and top up with coffee then some more coffee and even more coffee. Love these bottomless cups. After lunch we were able to get our slides in and we headed to Denver, Colorado.

Did some touristing around the Denver area, visiting Fort Collins, Golden, Boulder, Estes Park, Lakewood and pretty much all points in between. Once again though, we find ourselves too early in the season for some of the places we were hoping to visit.

Boo Hoo!

Regrettably that included a tour of the Coors plant. Come the end of the month and Memorial Weekend pretty much everything will be open 7 days but then we’ll start complaining about the number of tourists out there.

One of the many weird and wonderful
creations at Swetsville Zoo,
Fort Collins

Part of the funfair at Heritage Park
- looks like it could've been fun

Stanley Hotel at Estes Park where
Stephen King wrote "The Shining"

We're not drunk ... honest ... it's the camera

Casa Bonita at Lakewood in Denver - this is all inside an old department store.
The food's not all that great but the entertainment and surroundings
more than makes up for that.

Spent an extra day in Denver while Sue got over some bugs in her system then it was back on the road again. Headed westwards from Denver, stopping at a town called Leadville – the highest city in USA before

Silver Dollar Saloon in Leadville

travelling through Glenwood Canyon. Another spectacular piece of road – we have found so many. Stopped in at Parachute where, as one of the stories has it, the town was named for a mountain that had been eroded into the shape of a parachute.

How good is your imagination
- does this look like a parachute?

We preferred the story of the Anglicisation of the old Indian name Pahchouc. Here’s the photo – you be the judge.

We had a couple of people on our travels hype up the town of Ouray so we decided to pay it a visit. They weren’t lying. What a gorgeous little town. Touted as USA’s Switzerland it’s surrounding by mountains and has a whole bunch of restored Victorian buildings. It also has waterfalls, an old mine, several hot springs but, most importantly, has a brewery. No prizes for guessing where we went first. One of the waterfalls of course. Hard to get a good photo of the Box Canyon Waterfall so here’s one of our pickup and 5^th wheel in the car park in case you’ve forgotten what they look like.