9/19 - Rawlins, Wyoming, to Loveland, Colorado

We had another nice and uneventful drive.  I-80 from Rawlins to where we turned south just before Laramie was the same landscape....very similar to the day before. 

Here's a big oil refinery within view of I-80 east of Rawlins, a reminder of the oil and gas industry here.


The one really interesting thing was the extreme increase in snow fencing. I started counting fences (because some had numbers on them) but gave up after 50. There were hundreds of them.

What I learned, thanks to Wikipedia, is that this 77-mile section of I-80 was shut down very shortly after it was opened in the 1970's because of snow drifts. There is a lot of science involved in designing and placing the fences and they make a tremendous difference in winter road management. When correctly placed they create drifts and stop blowing snow from closing roads. They do nothing about falling snow, but that is controllable by plowing. Another interesting thing about them is that, when they need to be replaced, they are reused for furniture and flooring.  

As we turned south off I-80 into northeastern Colorado the terrain became much more interesting with lots of rock formations. It looked a lot more like the southwest....New Mexico and Arizona.

This formation is red granite with a Mohawk top-knot.

Elevation changed from up to 8,100' down to 5,000' along this stretch of road but there were no dramatic drops. This was one of the few areas that actually looked like a big change was coming. It wasn't as bad as it looked from here.

Once we got into Fort Collins we were in the city traffic. It was moving slowly so wasn't hard to deal with.....until this very large cement mixer wanted part of our lane. That was rather uncomfortable but it didn't last long.

Our campground is on the road which goes up to Estes Park and Rocky Mountains National Park where we're going tomorrow.  The campground is on the Big Thompson River and was one of many places severely damaged (or destroyed) by the disastrous flood in the canyon in September 2013. The campground owners had to rebuild their section of the river bank and truck out over 5 feet of silt which covered a lot of the campground. They've done a remarkable job of rebuilding but there's still a lot of dirt here that looks like river silt. In addition to all the expense involved in rebuilding, they lost a lot of income from washed out sites. It was a really tough time for them and a lot of other people.

The temperature was 91 when we arrived at 2:00 pm. We quickly set up and immediately retired to the air conditioning where we stayed until after dinner when it had cooled down to 70. Tomorrow and Wednesday we'll be at much higher elevations in the park where it will be a lot cooler.