One reason I hate driving down to Colorado Springs during the week.

If you still don’t understand, I could upload the other six pictures I took during the drive down. They are spaced evenly at 10 minute intervals and look exactly the same.

Might I just mention that there are some joys to living in So Dak, never seeing that is one of them!! It does however vaguely remind me of Mpls.

Have you tried the back roads? At least if there's a traffic jam, it's a really pretty drive.

Thats one of the reasons I moved back to Portland.

In 96-97 Portland and Denver were about the same size in metro populations, but Denver's traffic was much, much worse.

Portland has some serious natural boundries to traffic, 2 rivers, 800 foot granite foothills, alot of streams, creeks and brooks, so there are natural bottlenecks, but we've kept the urban growth down, and housing prices up-up-up, and traffic ain't that bad. Heck I know people that commute from Portland to Seattle (160 miles) everyday, and Eugene to Portland (110 miles). Even the rush traffic isn't all that bad, but it gets worse in the summer.

Actually, Traveler's idea isn't a bad one. US85 isn't too far west of you. And there are some very pretty (if indirect) routes to the east of I-25.

[wandered here from Julia's blog...]

This brings to mind a possible flaw in my own plans for the near future...

At the end of this month (the 29th), I'm flying to Denver (evening arrival) with the plan to get a rental car and drive to Colorado Springs (in order to attend the Society of Actuaries Spring Meeting May 30-31, if anyone cares). Yes, there is a reason I'm not flying directly to Colorado Springs... That follows below.

On Saturday (June 1), I'll be driving from Colorado Springs to Steamboat Springs (via Denver, from the maps) to spend the next week with my parents, niece and nephew (who are themselves flying into Denver from Cincinnati and driving their own rental to Steamboat Springs on Saturday)... They arrive around mid-day, so I was planning to leave CS no earlier than the afternoon so as not to beat them to the place we're staying (as it's their reservations, not mine).

Then the next Wednesday, I'm planning to head back to Denver to fly back here to New Hampshire, on a noon-ish flight.

So, am I going to run into any of this scary traffic at the times I'm looking at being on the interstates (D to CS Wednesday evening, CS to SS via D Saturday afternoon, SS to D Wed to arrive noonish)? How long should each of these take, if you don't mind me asking?

(Also, any suggestions of things we would just "have to do" while in the area are welcome...)