Winter Weather in Denver
We hit the road, I-70, at a very slow pace. Some sections were shut down due to adverse winter weather conditions or for avalanche control . This was not fun to drive through, especially at the amazing speed of 25 miles per hour. It seemed like forever for us to reach the Eisenhower Tunnel. Supposedly, it demarcates where the weather will magically change and when you make it out of the tunnel the Denver side of the weather becomes milder. Unfortunately, this was not the case today.
We were greeted with snow packs, ice, slush, chain restrictions, and more ice. We were also greeted with the occasional car in a ditch at the side of the road. After about an hour, we were reduced to following clear tire tracks on the road. Shortly after that, the road conditions changed from freeze ice to wet water run-off and by the time we were approaching Denver, the road was completely dry.
Denver is definitely not the Rockies, it’s flat and brown. With only driving at 20 mph, we arrived into Denver several hours later than we expected, and it was beginning to look like another snow storm was about to hit. So, we pulled into the first coffee shop we saw to first relax with a nice hot cup of tea and then to go online to find a hotel we can book for the night. There was no way we wanted to drive through another storm, that really took it out of us. When we got inside, it looked like we weren’t the only one’s in need of getting off the road for a bit. There were several people sitting around and conversing about the winter weather conditions on I-70. When we got our teas, we chimed in the discussion. One couple said how they saw a car sliding sideways for a good 1/4 mile and then only stopped when they hit a ditch on the side of the road. Another person said a semi-truck barely missed side-swiping them before he almost jack-knifed, but managed to get control of his rig and continue to drive on down the road. We brought up how we were going to get a room for tonight, and the couple sitting next to us told us to go online and book at room at this site . They let us use their laptop and told us that they use this site when ever they travel.
We booked a room at a place right next to the Denver airport , which was great, because we decided it would be better to turn in our rental car and fly to Florida.