I've been in New Mexico the past couple of days and yesterday night Gerd flew down to join me. He's anxious to see Colorado since he's never been and I've been begging to move back out west for a couple of years. The plan is to drive up to Durango, take the steam engine to Silvertown and back and then drive to Denver before flying back.
He asked to take the backroads.
So today we came to a junction between Highway 550 and Highway 4. Hwy 4 eventually heads to Los Alamos (the wrong way) but a turn off to Highway 126 provided an option for a scenic bypas.
We only discovered 45 minutes into the drive that "Highway 126" turns into a dirt road with one car bridges. At the end of the paved road a sign announced "Unpassible in winter". Well...it's March right. The first day of spring was last week, it's not winter.
There really wasn't much snow on the ground, so we decided to give it a try....after all, turning around would add another 1 1/2 hours onto our time.
Bad choice. The further we went the deeper the snow got, and our Dodge Avenger rental car was not equiped with snow tires, snow chains, or any other winter weather helper. Plus it's an automatic, and that didn't help matters any either.
Another half hour later we realized it was getting a bit rough. We were starting to slide around, but were following the car tracks of another vehicle that had passed earlier. There wasn't a good way to turn around. Eventually a car coming from the opposite direction blocked our path. The guy driving was skidding around and having difficulty staying on the road...and he was driving a Subaru all wheel drive...
So we managed to get around him and find a place to turn around. We did not end up stranded and freezing in the ditch.
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