Colorado Road Trip

Our adventure started the evening before we were supposed to drive to Chama. We were supposed to pick up our rental car in order to pack it this evening and then leave at 2:00 or 3:00am. We chose Hertz as they had the best rates for doing a long one way rental and didn’t limit us to just the surrounding states. We arrived at the Hertz location at 5:30pm, just to have them tell us their computers were down and they couldn’t rent to us. They couldn’t even look up who was renting there to let them know… They told us to go to this other location would honor the rental.

We frantically headed to the other Hertz location, even calling them to make sure they didn’t close before we got there (Houston traffic) and were told that they were leaving at 6:00pm regardless if we made it or not. We made it (barely) but after she looked up our reservation, she said she didn’t have a car we could take out of state except one that was just dropped off and wasn’t clean. We looked at it and said it would be fine. She then said the computer wouldn’t allow her to give it to us and that we would have to come back in the morning. We asked if she could call other Hertz locations or anything and she said that this was all she could do (she obviously wanted to just leave). Emily and I left with plans to go to the Hertz at Hobby Airport (as all of the location Hertz locations were now closed). We stopped for dinner at Chick-fil-a for me to realize that I forgot my credit card and drivers license at the Hertz location… We headed back and thankfully a guy was still there and was able to give us the credit card and ID. Emily was almost in tears as we drove to Hobby so I had her drop me off and head home to finish packing. I told the guy at the Hertz dealership my story and he had the look that this isn’t the first time for that location. He easily got me a car and honored the rate I had but I still had to cover the airport tax, which I could understand. I ended up with a white Chevy Cruze. I made it back to the house, loaded the Cruze and was in bed by 9:30.

We set an alarm for 3:30am but we were up at 3:00am and on the road by 3:20am. We had plans to take the Lubbock route to Chama instead of through Dallas / Ft. Worth but Jason Rose took the Lubbock route to Chama the day before and said it had slower speeds than the Dallas route and recommended we do that way. We didn’t time our departure the best and hit Ft. Worth morning traffic. After that we hit two lines of pretty good storms between Ft. Worth and Amarillo. We stopped at Whataburger in Amarillo (the one on the east side of the city) and Emily took over driving for me the rest of the way to Chama. We hit two sets of road construction on I-40 in New Mexico, grabbed Starbucks in Santa Fe and made it to Chama about 6:00pm, Chama time. Total drive time was 15.5 hrs. We checked into the Vista Del Rio Lodge in Chama, drove through the train yard to grab some pictures, then hit the High Country Restaurant for dinner. We then went by The Hotel (Roger’s place) to visit with Jason on the balcony before calling it a night.

Safe Travels,
B&E

To Day 3
Back to Colorado Road Trip / Rock Mountain NP Report