Monday, July 15, 2019

Fwd: Laramie Wyoming

FYI


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Albert Nelms

Sun, Jul 14, 12:17 PM (1 day ago)
to me
Driving downhill on unknown curvy roads is dangerous, cliffs or no cliffs.


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From: Steve Kusaba
Date: Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 11:47 PM
Subject: Re: Laramie Wyoming
To: John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com>


Your first letter was more correct. There are many deadly cliff drops from west of Laramie to Cheyenne. The roads form dry ice too, you can spin out of control and many people have died falling off the cliff. Also, the road from Laramie, south to Fort Collins is one of the most deadly in the nation (in winter in particular) with an impressive array of deadly crashes. Sometimes its smart to take those roads 15 miles an hour and arrive very late but alive.

I was driving from the east to Cheyenne and the road spun me out on its pure black ice surface, I was spinning around and around and was lucky that A. There were no cars near by and B. I wasn't on the other side with the cliffs.

On Sun, Jul 14, 2019 at 9:02 AM John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com> wrote:
The reality is there are probably no cliffs to drive off of.   I have seen youtube videos of the area, and in the daytime the roads don't look that bad. However, I didn't know that.  What I knew was that I was driving downhill in the dark with mountainous terrain on a curvey road where I couldn't see where I was going.

On Sat, Jul 13, 2019 at 11:53 PM John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com> wrote:
Laramie Wyoming is an interesting place that is kind of a footnote in my life. About 26.5 years ago I moved to Salt Lake City by packing everything that would fit into my tiny Toyota Tercel.

The trip from Cheyenne to Laramie is mostly uphill as you drive west into the Rocky Mountains. It was dark, and at that time it was also very foggy and a severe winter storm was also predicted. I was hearing predictions that the state police might close the interstate, so I decided to stop in Laramie and find a hotel rather than risk driving any farther. Where I stopped was close to the University of Wyoming. Laramie is a college town. I stopped someplace and had a chance to chat with some college students.

A little over 22 years later I moved back. My moving strategy was the same because I only took what I could fit in my 2000 Grand Marquis. I stopped briefly in Laramie, and the place I stopped wasn't quite the same. It looked more redneck in a country-western sort of way. It was probably a different part of town. I saw the sunset from Laramie.

However, as I headed east from Laramie toward Cheyenne, I ran into this incredibly dense fog. This was like my experience driving the same road 22 years earlier. However, the difference was that I was driving downhill on a very curvey road and the visibility was terrible. I was pretty nervous because I thought that if I were to overshoot a curve I could easily drive off a cliff. I slowed down quite a bit, but then I got passed by an orange VW Beetle going at a pretty good speed. I decided to follow the Beetle because I assumed that he knew where he was going. I figured that if I stayed back at the right distance I would watch him take the curves, and besides, if he drove off a cliff I would have some warning.





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