Road Trip, Day 1 - Monday 10 November: Fort Collins, Co to Rocks Springs, WY

Our awesome time in Fort Collins came to an end with the collection of our rental car from Denver airport. Time for the road trip to start!

It was sad to leave behind the wonderful people in Fort Collins, but Bren and I were also looking forward to this part of our visit to this beautiful country - the twofold plan is that our route will hopefully take us through some stunning scenery and also take us to visit more friends and family .

When I left Fort Collins in the morning to collect the rental car, it was really warm - about 20C. However, on my way back, I encountered the first 'live' snow of our visit, with an accompanying sharp drop in temperature. 

This unexpected cold weather snap was the result of, and I quote: a "bomb cyclone" -- a swiftly and markedly intensifying storm -- that shifted the path of the jet stream and sent cold air rushing toward the United States.

Anyhow, I didn't know what that meant and stuck to my original plan to take the following route to Rock Springs, about a 500km drive, our first stop enroute to Grand Teton National Park in Jackson Hole, Wyoming:

The initial road leading through the Poudre Canyon in the Roosevelt National Forest was fine, and we even saw some mountain sheep / goat type wildlife:

Will it fit?

I hope everything keeps going right . . .

However, the higher up we went on Cameron Pass, the worse the road / driving conditions became. I was also still annoyed that Alamo gave me a 2WD SUV instead of a 4WD SUV as promised.

Luckily there was a snow plough on the road doing his thing, and I decided to stay right behind him

Slippery Ice!

Our saving grace

More white stuff

my hero

I want to marry you

Just to give you an idea of what the driving conditions was like:

At last we managed to get through the pass 

and arrived at Colorado's moose viewing capital. 

the moose must have been taking a snooze . . .

From Walden to Rock Springs driving conditions were better, although when we stopped to "fill up with gas", I had to break Brenda out of the car as her door were frozen shut :-o