EDIT: Actual Day 1 route:
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I knew we would run into some cool weather early in the trip - being in the mountains and all, but I was thinking 60's and light rain. I never would have imagined 2 inches of freezing rain/snow.
Everything started well, we headed out from Loveland to Estes Park with blue skies and sun. It was actually pretty hot and we were ready to get going to cool down a bit. Estes Park was beautiful and we entered Rocky Mountain National park via 34 and started climbing. It cooled down of course as we went above the treeline but everything went well. About halfway through we saw some clouds and geared up. Turns out that was a bit preliminary, but it remained cool. The roads were dry, so everything was still going well. We passed the continental divide (forgetting to stop) and ran into some rain but nothing serious.
It was getting a little late (1:45) so we had lunch at Granby. It was a quick lunch then back on the road. We tried to make good time because we still had quite a ways to go. It was pretty uneventful until we headed the wrong way down I-70 near Empire. That was my fault, but we got turned around within a mile. We headed west on 70 to the Copper Mountain exit. It looked a little cloudy again as we headed south, but we had seen this before and I wasn't worried.
As we headed toward Leadville on 91 I started to get a little concerned. About half the cars passing us going the other way had a buildup of what looked like hail/snow on the windshields. I didn't really want to run into hail, but I was hoping we would miss the weather and we were so close to Leadville and so far away from any other stopping point, it started spitting rain, then it got cold, then it started building up on my helmet... Bad news. I pulled over to ask Pete what he wanted to do (we were 10 miles from Leadville at this point) and as I pulled over I just about fell down. There was a half-inch of sleet on the ground already! Yikes!
We sat and talked for a few minutes (getting SOAKED) and decided to just push to Leadville. Wow, that had to be the most unnerving 10 miles of my life. I felt I was going to go down the entire time. It got pretty bad and we were following car tracks as best we could (where it was only wet). We got into Leadville and there was about 2" of snow on the ground. We pulled under a local old-style gas station awning and went inside. Fortunately the proprietor was friendly and had some coffee for us. I was literally shaking so hard (from the cold) that I almost couldn't drink the coffee. I was REALLY concerned. We were probably in there about a half hour - talking with the guy and trying to warm up. It stopped snowing and warmed up to just rain. The gas station attendant told us it should get better further on and so we decided to try to get to Buena Vista. Later on as we drove by the local bank we found out that it was 38 degrees! (This was AFTER it had warmed up a bit.)
Fortunately it was pretty much smooth sailing after that. I mean it was cold, but it stopped raining and we made good time. We decided to stop in Buena Vista instead of Gunnison like we originally planned. It was probably a good decision. We found a nice motel - with a hot tub and warmed up. Hopefully that was the worst of the trip. Hopefully. After that, a hard rain will look great. Perhaps we may get lucky and only have cloudy weather tomorrow.
Speaking of tomorrow, we are going to try to get to Durango, or perhaps even Cortez. Cortez is 300 miles, and if we don't run into any snow again I think we won't have any problems. We've checked the weather and it's pretty much 50% chance of rain with a high of 60-70 degrees. That sounds good to me. We aren't going to be at the altitude Leadville was at (over 10,000 feet) either so hopefully it's just rain.
Here's the next leg:
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