Crossing west to east on I-70

[DOUBLE H]

Originally Posted by DOUBLE H

Exit 19 in Fruita and the Horizon Drive exit in Grand Junction has plenty of motels. Restaurants? The edge goes to the Horizon drive exit. Like CoCheesehead had stated, March can be a crapshoot going up the passes. Watch the weather reports on tv. And don't try to outrace a storm, the ones in March/April can get squirrelly in no time. The digital C-DOT board on I-70 around mile marker 22 generally gets the info out fairly quickly when the weather turns bad, for that matter the message boards stay on top of the situation regarding vehicle crashes.


Glenwood is certainly a nice place to spend the night provided you hit a stretch of good weather, plenty of mom and pop motels on the north side of Interstate 70. Love them hot springs!

I also want to mention Colo. 82 from Glenwood Springs to Aspen. It's 40 miles or so but on a busy day traffic wise it can take up an hour and a half of your time driving. You'll go through Carbondale, Snowmass, and Basalt. I'm not a ski guy at all and am not a Vail/Aspen guy either but if you want a beautiful drive, you have got that, for sure.

[DOUBLE H]

Originally Posted by COcheesehead

Best restaurant IMHO in Fruita is the Hot Tomato. They have an interesting story too.

Yep, it's a great place. The place really fills up fast in the evening. Speaking of which, the daily paper has been running a poll regarding a person's favorite restaurant. GJSentinel.com right now shows pretty much a tie between The Hot Tomato and W.W. Peppers.

[Durian Beach]

Originally Posted by Robert5

Glenwood Springs is your best option in March unless you want to ski and spend a lot of money in Breckenridge or Vail.



Limon on the front range has some decent affordable hotels, a whole lot of not very much between Limon and Topeka KS.

There are tons of motels and restaurants in Hays KS, seems to be the main Oasis along the route. Colby KS has a bunch of motels too. I wouldn't want to get off the interstate in Topeka, it seemed to be an old stretch built before Interstate Standards through run down older parts of town. Coming back I avoided that mistake by taking 470 bypass around the south edge of town. I wouldn't really want to take 70 across country in Winter, mountain passes have snow late into the spring, unless the weather was going to be perfect I'd take I 40 across further south. On the plains in the west you see gigantic gates they use to shut down the interstates during blizzards.