Quite a day!

Sunday proved to be quite a day. We knew we were going to have to deal with post-blizzard road conditions, so we got up at 6:30a.m. to get a good start. We had the motel breakfast room to ourselves! I went online to the Colorado DOT to look at their road conditions map. We were surrounded by snow-packed, icy roads, and that was particularly true for our original plan to go north on US 285. But going west on US 50 toward Gunnison, CO looked better - we would be on dry roads in about 60 miles. But we had to go over Monarch Pass first - at about 11,000 feet (as I recall). We decided to do it. We would just have to go slow. We were on the road at 8:30a.m. It turned out to be not too bad. The road was well plowed. We went about 35-40 m.p.h. for probably an hour and a half anyway, maybe two, but soon after Gunnison we were on essentially dry road and eventually we were totally out of the snow zone and had clear sailing all the way to Alpine. So we made the right decision. We basically went to Western-most CO, went north through Grand Junction, then up to Rangely, CO, over into Utah and up into western Wyoming at Mountain Home and then up along the western border of WY to Alpine. Road conditions were great, it was sunny and cold, the scenery was awesome, but the roads were full of curves, so it was not fast-going. We drove 13 hours and 600 miles! Ellen is a trooper for sure. We arrived at Alpine at about 9:40p.m. Jenny had gone to bed but Paul and Max were still up waiting for us. We talked a while and then went to bed. Shortly after settling into bed, I got a really bad nosebleed! Hadn't had one for decades. I guess it was a combination of dry membranes and altitude. I had to wake Ellen up and get her help, and eventually it stopped, thankfully. I did get some sleep after that and it's fine today. I've had a fairly quiet morning. Max has stayed home from school since Nana is here just one day. Pretty soon we'll go over to the new house site for a tour. We heard a lot about it last night and this morning from Paul - it dominates his life right now for sure and will continue to do so until end of May 2019 when they hope to move in. It is basically going pretty well, though building a house is never easy or without a wide variety of problems to be dealt with.

PHOTO GALLERY:

                                            Starting out

                                          Pretty snowy 

                         Up over the Monarch Pass

                                   Driving getting better

                        Ah!  Totally snow-less conditions

                                        Great views!

 

                                          Clear sailing!