Well, I think I have to say this was the worst day of the trip.
We actually got off to a good start, leaving around 6:30 am, which is when we wanted to take off. We didn’t hit a great deal of traffic heading out of Denver which was also a welcome surprise.
The shenanigans started soon after we got out of Colorado Springs. The original plan was to take I-25 South to Albuquerque and then I-40 West until we had to take hwy-64 N to the Grand Canyon. Somewhere south of Colorado Springs on 25 there was a massive accident that closed down the freeway, prompting Carissa to look for alternative routes. After some thorough map reading and consulting with our GPS we decided to set out across southern Colorado and choose an alternate route to the Grand Canyon.
Good and bad choice. We got the adventure we were looking for on our trip, just a little more than we had anticipated. The hilarity included lots of snow in the mountains, my first ticket ever, and driving through the darkest dark I’ve ever experienced.
Colorado was the state of most of the badness. Once off the freeway we were driving through some pretty rural areas. Some mountains and some flat areas in between. All in all, it was beautiful country. The problem came in the weather we experienced and what I believe was a law enforcement official eager to fill the coffers of his township.
We’ll go ahead and get the ticket talk out of the way. Getting your first ticket sucks. At least it does for me. Going almost thirty years without getting a ticket was a little bit of a badge of honor for me. It is particularly annoying getting a ticket in the circumstances in which mine came. I’ll do my best to keep this short and simple. In a valley with long straight roads with a speed limit of 55-65 for the most part. Get stuck behind two cars straddling the yellow line on the side of the road with right turn blinkers on with nowhere to turn going about 25, and unable to pass. As we come to a cluster of about 15 buildings they start to pull over and I try to jump around them before getting to the buildings. Cop pulls me over for, according to him, doing 50 in a 40. Not sure that I believe him on that speed. I’m not sure that I could have gotten up to that speed in the short distance between getting out from behind the cars I was stuck behind and him. The worst part about it is that the fine was doubled for speeding in a “work zone” where no work was being done and there wasn’t any work equipment around to indicate work was being done except for some barrels on the side of the road. After looking at the town’s website, the work didn’t begin until after we had gone through the town, so there’s a kicker for you.
Call me cynical, but I believe I fell victim to a cop in a no-stoplight town that found an easy way to fill up the township piggy bank. He knows that I can’t contest the ticket b/c there’s no way I can appear in their municipal court, so he got my money and the money from the car behind me that he also pulled over. This is an event that I hope to forget soon.
The next bit of fun came after I made Cris drive for the first time on our trip out here. I wasn’t feeling that well when we stopped for lunch so I asked to her drive. In one sense, I felt bad that she started driving when the weather got crappy in the mountains, but in another sense it was a good thing b/c she has more experience driving in the snow and I felt more comfortable with her behind the wheel than I would have been. The picture below pretty much say what needs to be said about Wolf Creek Pass, which by the way is where the continental divide is at that point in the mountains.
After Wolf Creek pass, things were pretty easy going, and quite beautiful until we got into Arizona relatively near the Grand Canyon. Everything that I’ve heard about the southwest is how beautiful the sunsets are and how big and starry the skies can be. I got robbed. Our trip through the desert was, generally speaking, marked with clouds and rain off and on. What’s worse is, when its cloudy in the desert at night when there are no cities giving off ambient light, its dark. How dark is it you ask? Try this: tonight, turn off all the light in your house, go into an interior closet, close your eyes, and put a black hood over your head. That’s almost as dark as it is in the desert when its cloudy.
So driving through the dark isn’t that bad if you’re going along straight roads. The worst part on straight roads is the lights of oncoming cars seem much brighter than usual and messes with your eyes a bit. For us though, we got the joy of driving along Hwy 64, which winds through Grand Canyon National park along the canyon, in the pitch black. For anyone that doesn’t know, I have an irrational fear of ledges, which doesn’t mesh well with driving along a curvy road next to a really big cliff that you’re not sure how far away it is since you’re driving through ink. It probably took us an extra hour or two to get to our hotel b/c I was going so slow through the park. Now that its been done, I can look back on it and I have a good story to tell, but I won’t be signing up for that again any time soon.
So that was Denver to the Grand Canyon. Not the best day of the drive, but I have to admit that it could have been worse given the circumstances. Last Roadtrip Rewind will be about our day at the Grand Canyon, which I hope to do pretty soon.
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