The weather has been crazy lately. So crazy in fact that our school had a snow day on Thursday!! So, after a few days of being cooped up inside Andy and I decided that we needed to get out of the house on Sunday afternoon. Since the mountain is closed and everything was covered with snow we didn't have very many options. We decided that it had been awhile since our last geocaching adventure so we decided to give that a try. After locating a seemingly easy cache in Summit County we gathered our coats and a few toys for Hobie and made our way over the pass. We were greeted with fresh snow as we made our way up the pass. By the time we made it close to the cache the roads were slick and visibility was not great. In fact, we missed the exit and had to go to the next exit a few miles down the road in order to turn around. When we finally made it to the desired exit we found a place to park the car, put our coats on, and let Hobie out of the car. He was so excited to run around in the fresh snow. As we blazed our way down the trail, Hobie leaped from side to side rolling around in the fresh powder. The storm made it hard for us to achieve a high level of accuracy with our GPS. We finally decided to just start searching under rocks (that were buried in snow mind you) because the clue for this cache seemed to indicate that it would be hidden amongst a pile of rocks. At this point we all looked like snow monsters. We finally found the desired treasure, logged our information in the book, and dropped off the travel bug.
We were not ready to head home quite yet so we decided to drive to Silverthorne. We didn't really have a plan but we were feeling spontaneous. After a trip to Target for washer fluid and a quick flick in town we decided that maybe it was finally time to head home. For the fun of it we decided to take that long way home over Loveland Pass. It was beautiful up there. There were even a couple of crazy people who had their friends drop them off at the top of the pass so they could ski down! As we were making our way west we began to see signs warning about an accident 3 miles up the road. As you might imagine, an accident on the freeway has a tendency to slow traffic so we crawled along at about 3 miles per hour through that section of the road. During the slow time we saw about 6 or 7 tow tracks pass on the shoulder of the road. It turns out that the accident involved at least 10 cars. (One must have been sandwiched between two others)
After we passed the accident site the traffic began to flow and we thought we were in the clear. Not quite. Vail Pass turned out to be an adventure all its own. At about 8pm we slowed to a stop on the way up the pass then sat for awhile. Andy decided to start a trend by shutting the car off in an attempt to save gas (thankfully we had just topped off the tank!) About a half hour later cars started to crawl a bit up ahead so we turned the car back on and moved up a few hundred yards only to stop again. Around 9 it became apparent that we were going to be there for awhile. Hobie was getting antsy so we decided to let him out of the car so he could relieve himself. Happy puppy!! As previously mentioned, Hobie loves bounding around in the snow and we were quite surrounded by it. We laughed because the freeway resembled a parking lot in the fact that the road was covered with snow but there were a bunch of dry pieces of pavement where the cars used to be parked when we finally were able to move ahead a little bit. Sometime around the 10 o'clock hour Hobie and I took a walk along the side of the freeway. Cars were parked as far as the eye could see so we decided that it was as good a time as any for a Sunday evening walk. We walked quite a distance before heading back to the car and were greeted by numerous oohs and ahhs and a couple of "can I pet him?"
Given the fact that I had to get up and go to work in the morning I decided to recline my seat and catch a few zzz's. Hobie thought the idea was wonderful and decided to curl up in a ball in the back of the car. The next thing I remember is getting off the exit in Avon and pulling up in our driveway at about 11:45 pm. Talk about an adventure! Geocaching, sightseeing, and 3 hours parked on Vail Pass-what a day!
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