A bit about the roads and traffic

First the UPDATE:

The appraiser will be here any minute.  The inspector is coming at 2:30pm today.  (Ok, so the appraiser is NOT coming today.  Oh brother)  

We have a storage unit reserved in Tomah, Wisconsin.  It's kind of on the western edge of the state, but it at least gets our first load into driving range.  

Bryan has picked his transfer possibilities for the grocery store.  Our first choices are Eagle River, Antigo, and Wausau.  I guess he can change them around still if he wants.  Nothing is set in stone yet.    

We have found a couple of homes to look at.  

Our plan is to take our first load out to Wisconsin leaving Saturday 3/16, and coming back around 3/22.  And no worries.  We loaded the trailer, we should be able to unload the trailer.  We have dollies and carts to move things.    

Anyway, as promised, a whole *nuther* thing about the traffic:

Because of the mountains, there are only four East-West routes in Northern Colorado.

Highway 14 over Cameron Pass is great, but it's 5 hours to Fort Collins in that direction, over a windy road that is often snow packed, and the tourist traffic is getting worse there.

Highway 34 through Rocky Mountain National Park-Trial Ridge Road, which is closed during the winter.  During the summer, it costs $30 for a day pass, or $35 for a 7-day pass.  It's chock full of tourists (I'm not sure if it's by appointment only, but some of the areas of the park are, and there was talk of making Trail Ridge that way also).  The RV traffic is incredible.  And then there's getting through Estes Park and the Big Thompson Canyon after that.  It's an all-day thing.  

Then there's I70 from Denver.  This is the quickest route on a good day, but there are few good days.  It's not only jam packed with stop-and-go traffic during ski season, but it has become the same during the summer months too.  

If it's snowing, forget it.  They had to enact a law, called the Traction Law, to keep people with inadequate vehicles out when the weather gets bad.  There's a fine of $600 if they catch you, and over $1000 if you cause a traffic problem with your two-wheel-drive and bald tires.  This of course doesn't seem to stop anyone from heading up I70.  We have been caught in that mess more times than we can count.  

And Denver traffic is no picnic.  Getting to Allen's place in Lakewood is OK, but getting to Gina's in Fort Collins (or Debra's in Wellington) is a bit of a nightmare with the perpetual road construction and stop-and-go traffic jams on I25.  

The 4th route is to leave I70 and go over Berthoud Pass on US Highway 40.  But that pass has two-way ski traffic and a steep windy road as well.  

There's one other route, to go North through to Laramie and back down to Fort Collins.  That takes about the same time as Highway 14 over Cameron, but that is WAY out of the way, and you get the crap-shoot of wind and weather in Southeastern Wyoming and a chance that either US Highway 287 or I80 is closed once you get there.  That's happened to us before too.  

So, nobody wants to come up here to visit.  We don't blame anyone, and there's no hard feelings, but it's just too hard for us to go down there either.  On several visits we've been caught in a storm with roads closed while we are trying to get home.  It hurts but sometimes it's just much harder to travel out than it is to sit at home and miss everyone.   

Then there's Highway 9 from Kremmling to Silverthorne.  A couple years ago, Channel 4 in Denver designated Highway 9 as the deadliest stretch of road in the state.  And no wonder.  It's a beautiful drive, but increasingly dangerous, because the traffic volume is really heavy at times.  There are blind curves and hills, and nowhere to go if someone comes at you head-on.  It's the main route from Denver to Steamboat Springs.  See statistics, https://www.vaildaily.com/news/this-10-mile-stretch-in-summit-county-is-the-deadliest-on-all-of-colorado-highway-9/ .  This website has a pretty cool graph that tells you about how many accidents and what type, on different stretches of Highway 9.

Also Highway 9 is the alternative route when CDOT closes Glenwood Canyon on I70.  This has happened a lot more frequently in recent years.  There was a forest fire pretty close to the highway, and that opened the area up to more frequent and catastrophic flash flooding.  A couple years ago, there was a rock slide that shut down that canyon for several months.  And when they shut down that stretch of road, ALL traffic eastbound and westbound is funneled through Kremmling on Highway 9 to Highway 40.  It's bumper to bumper in both directions.  People try to pass but the oncoming traffic is too thick.  There's a lot of fatal head on crashes.  

Also there's the animal problem too.  They fixed 12 miles of Highway 9, in which they put up a high fence on both sides of the road, plus they put in a bunch of underpasses, and two huge overpasses, so that the deer, moose, and elk can cross safety.  That helped a lot, but that's just 12 miles of a 36 mile trip.  Bryan hit a deer once already, and I can't tell you how many close calls we've both had.  I suppose that will be a problem wherever we go, but we are hoping for a home close to work so we don't have to drive so far, and that will lessen the risk.

Then there's the forest fires.  In 2020, all the roads east of us were closed for weeks when there were several fires.  I saw Wyoming firetrucks in Silverthorne.  They had to go 294 miles (5 hours) out of their way to get to the southern edge of the fire.  They could not get to the fires by way of Saratoga or Laramie, or Cameron Pass, or even through the Park on 34.  If that type of year happens again and we are cut off, how will we get out?  It's a scary prospect.  

We've been to Wisconsin a couple times now.  There's traffic, yes, around the populated areas.  But there are routes around traffic that are not 5 hours long.  There will be snow on the roads, but most of them are long and straight, with no mountains worthy of a run-away-truck-ramp.  There will be tourists, but there won't be one road funneling them into the valley and only one way out.  

So, hopefully, in Wisconsin, we will find a lot more peace and a lot less road rage!