Ok, we didn’t make it to Denver. We stopped short in Loveland, Colorado, since it was getting late. We had spent some time knocking around Laramie, Wyoming after being menaced by a few snow flurries at the pass.
The rocks and cliffs were spectacular leaving Salt Lake City and we climbed steadily with snowy peaks around us. There were ghostly old mining operations by the highway left to rust, and towns like Evanston and Rock Springs with fresh development. We fueled up at Little America in Wyoming, which at one point billed itself as the world’s largest truck stop.
On our way over the Rockies, we were concerned by some falling snow but it never got heavy enough to cause a problem and the temperature hovered just about freezing. I was excited to see the sign announcing that we were passing the Continental Divide, which delineates the Western from the Eastern half of the United States. The Continental Divide stretches all the way from Canada to the Mexican border, and we had seen its terminus on a recent visit to El Paso, Texas.
After climbing I-80 to nearly 8,000 feet in altitude, we descended through lush grasslands to Laramie, Wyoming. Laramie is a real Western town, with silhouettes of bucking broncos on pretty much every sign and flat surface. Locals told me these winter was so mild it hardly counted as such. It seems like winter in most of the Western U.S. was as mild and uneventful as the East’s was brutal and exhausting.
Since it was late in the day, we stopped at Loveland, Colorado for the night.