Colorado Snowstorm

Cheridy and I are out in Colorado right now. We shot a fantastic wedding (I’ll post images once we get home!). We planned on staying in Colorado for a few days to enjoy the beautiful mountains. Those of you that know me know that I’m very anal retentive about planning. This was one of the first trips that I didn’t plan very much and it’s been interesting.
Our first day we were going to head out to Dawn and Jay’s house who are Cheridy’s aunt and uncle but we found out that their daughter Devanie was in the hospital in Denver (I won’t go into details) so we ended up heading out to visit with them at the hospital which was really nice to have had that opportunity (we’ll be praying for ya Dev). After the hospital we headed to Rocky Mountain National Park. It was mostly snowy and gloomy and due to my lack of planning, I was an idiot and didn’t realize that the road crossing the park was still closed for the season, so we drove out there, stayed in the hotel and planned on heading back towards Denver and then on to Vail the next day. I had some time in the hotel to do some planning so I found our new destinations, hotels, etc.

Today we headed to Vail and it was very snowy and miserable outside. We decided to stop for lunch in a town called Frisco which is near Vail. We stopped for lunch and then got back on the road and we saw a sign that said the main highway was closed due to an accident. They had put a road block down and we were the first car after the road was closed. We figured that it might take an hour to clear so we found an alternate route. We started driving that way but the weather was crazy and after looking at the new route in more detail, it was going to take us over two 11,000 ft. mountain passes and we were right in the middle of a severe weather warning. So, we decided to wait it out by the main expressway and hope that the road was cleared soon. We saw lots of ambulances and firetrucks go by and with each one we figured…only a few more minutes and they’ll open the gate. Two hours later, a guy came by informing us that there was a 70 car pileup at Vail pass and that the road would be closed for another 10-12 hours. So, we went back to Frisco and checked into a hotel.
We realized that if our lunch had only been 5 minutes shorter, we might have been right in the middle of that pileup. Thank God for that!
After we checked into the hotel, we got online and found that ALL the highways in the area were closed due to other accidents. All the hotels in Frisco are sold out and the red cross is considering opening up a shelter for all the people that can’t get a room. This is crazy!!!

Outside the snow is blowing so hard you can’t see anything…so much for the beautiful mountains!!! Now we just want to get out of here and get home, but after waiting on hold with United Airlines for 1 hour, I finally gave up.

Here’s what the roads looked like today:

This is what we looked at for 2 hours: