80 degrees plus and snow

 weird, but true.  We drov e into the Rockies today, leaving Rifle, Colorado after a nice breakfast courtesy of the hotel and headed east into the Rockies.  Tunnels, real snow on the top of the ranges and fake snow for a summer time ski run were some of the things we have seen today.  Really pretty towns seemingly in their own micro-climates, wine industry, fruit etc.  Then through Vail which is a ski town/resort favoured by the Hollywood mob. 

At one point we were over 11,000 feet up and then through a tunnel at least a mile long and (the Eisenhower tunnel) and down about 5 thousand feet in the process. Makes our tiny Auckland motorway tunnel look like a pimple or a cave as Neil puts it.  The engineering in this country is amazing.  The freeway that traverses the Rockies, is multi-level and multi-multi- laned.  At one point our side was 5 lanes wide!  We managed to get through Denver – a city of 2million people  - without incident. 

You can see the lane going the other way - the concrete bit to the top of the photo

Same again

Short and sweet today as it’s late as we’ve been having dinner with extended family here in Denver and time to go to bed.

Jane and Neil