The roads we had chosen would take us over some of the highest roads in North America and seeing as we were chasing the winter up through the Rockies there was a good chance that we would come a cropper with the weather sometime. We had triumphed over Red Mountain Pass (11,018ft), on Sunday, back at Ouray.
Thursday
Next morning we set out to drive through Gunnison. After leaving Gunnison behind we had to climb up to Monarch Pass, over the Continental Divide (CD) (11,312ft) hoping that it would be not be icy (not nice with narrow roads, twisty without protective barriers). Amazingly we found that it was sunny and warm at the top, with very little wind. The roads were clear and dry. Good, considering that a week before the road had been closed because of snow. Descending the other side to Salida where we were to have lunch. The great news was that we actually managed to get away by 8.37 in the morning, a record. This meant that rather than having Cof/T at Gunnison and lunch at Salida, we were in Salida by 11.00, so we stopped there for cof/t in a family restaurant.
Salida is relatively low, but as we moved North to Leadville we started climbing again the country became progressively more rugged and 'Glenlike', the weather started to close in as we hit the cloud base and we had to outrun the snow flurries to Leadville.
We stopped in Leadville for lunch which we ate at Doc's Grill, Wings and nice soup for me, chicken salad and soup for Sally. Leadville is a quaint Victorian mining town, now full of gift shops and restaurants.
Over lunch we made the decision to press on to Tiger Run Campground at Breckenridge. This would take us onto Route 91 - 'The Top Of The Rockies' Scenic Byway, going over the Fremont Pass (CD again), 11,318ft one of the highest passes in the USA. Fortunately the poor weather at Leadville now gave way to being sunny and calm! From here it was a short run on I70 then through Frisco to our campground at Tiger Run.
3 comments:
Oh Leadville! that brings back memories where we got stuck in the snow for 2 hours and had to use bits of wood to dig ourselves out of the pile of snow Roy drove into! That was up on the Route of the Silver Kings.
fab photos! a lot of snow! Brrr!!
Hot in Denver ow though
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