Salt Lake to Denver

February 20, 2010

Today was a long, long, long day. The snow started early and basically didn't end. We hit patches of clear weather but those clear patches didn't last for long. The trip across Wyoming was typical for the winter and not enjoyable at all. We got to Laramie, WY and heard that I-80 was closed over The Summit. That is a pass I've driven many times and often wondered why there was even a road there, it is pretty dangerous in the winter. We found out the road was closed due to an 11 truck pile up. We had to take Hwy 287 from Laramie to Fort Collins since I-80 was closed. Hwy 287 is a two lane road that also has some bad spot. We found one of those spots at 4:00pm! We were headed south bound and started sliding. The struck spun 1/2 way around looking north bound and went into the oncoming lane and we slide sideways into the ditch. We were very luck that it happened where the ditch was pretty flat and there was no oncoming traffic when we spun into the other lane. The whole thing could have been much, much worse. We are all OK. We were very luck to find a tow truck that was able to come right away from Laramie. It took 1 & 1/2 hours from the time we went in the ditch to the time we were on the road again. When we were on the road again it was starting to get dark and it was still lightly snowing. We had another 1 & 1/2 to Denver, on a good day but with the bad weather what should have been an 8 hour day turned out to be a 13 hour day. I got home at 10:00pm and was very thankful to be home and finally out of the truck.