One Heck of a Detour

There's a big hole in the road just west of here. It's not going to affect our driving anytime soon, but the way Colorado mountain roads go it's a bit of a hassle.

There are some places in Colorado where there just aren't a lot of roads between cities/towns, especially when you get into the mountains. Today there was a big rock slide on a piece of I-70 in the canyon between Glenwood Springs and Dotsero. This is about 40 minutes west of where our family's mountain house is.

It's going to take a long time to fix this, up to a week, which is major. The detour is no laughing matter. Say you were staring at Vail, just a little ways east of Dotsero. Normally your drive to Glenwood Springs would be about 60 miles, or about 45 min on the interstate. The detour takes you all the way up and around the northern part of the state (roughly through Steamboat Springs to Craig to Rifle for those of you who know your CO geography). Now, according to Google maps, the drive will take you nearly 6 hours and is 234 miles long on mostly 2 lane twisty roads. Ugh.

And because Travis always likes a little bit of trivia - this stretch of I-70 was the last major piece of the originally planned (started in the 50's) Interstate Highway System to open to traffic when it was completed in 1992. Construction on the 12 miles through the canyon took 11 years (I remember the delays as we all took turns on the one lane that was open) and state university engineering programs had temporary classrooms out on site.