Day 6

Day 6 Today we almost died. Almost. The day started out well enough. We got packed up and going as usual. 1 mile down the road Grant realized that Alex had unbuckled the tethering to her car seat so we pulled over to fix that. We continued on out of Estes Park taking a scenic route that led us East and then South down out of the mountains. It was a very scenic slow going road with lots of wildlife. We saw, deer, elk, and a moose. The weather was perfect. We ended up in an old mining town named central city that is about 7 miles from I-70. There is a long highway that connects the city to the Interstate. It is 7 miles long, four lanes that are divided in the middle, and an 8% grade downhill. This is a fairly steep long winding downhill. Towing a trailer required some transmission braking and the like to help keep your brakes cool. This is when it all went wrong. I was behind some red small car. A Scion I think. This car pulled over onto the shoulder, and I instinctively moved over into the left lane to give him space, in case he opened a door or something. The red car then inexplicably made a U turn right in front of me. I was going about 60mph and the car was about 30- 40 yards in front of me and turned really slowly. I had barely enough time to react. I pressed the brakes as hard as I could and braced for impact. As I did that, with the amount of momentum we had the trailer, she jackknifed and the trailer slid out sideways from the Sequoia and the Sequoia began to go into a flat spin and pitch like the whole rig was about to roll over. Suddenly I heard some sort of alarm siren go off in the Sequoia, as if I fighter jet had been locked onto by a missile. I felt several thuds and thumps and the Sequoia took the controls from me and fixed the spin and roll and then released and we were angling toward the shoulder which I was able to correct. Apparently the Sequoia has some sort of computerized skid control that detects such impending disasters and applies differential braking to the four wheels couple with transmission work and the like to correct the situation. This all happened in a matter of seconds. My thoughts went from fear, to wanting to kill the driver of the other car for putting my family at risk, and then relief. We had to pull over shortly after as this situation caused one of the rotors and brake pads to overheat. I think it has warped just a bit. Nonetheless we live. The Toyota Sequoia gets props for being a hell of a tow vehicle. We got onto the Interstate, which at this point and for the next 100 miles or so, is high altitude grades and descents. Very fatiguing driving. We stopped in Vail, and found a local park to make lunch and have a picnic. The park was clean and beautiful so we ate hot dogs and played a family game of soccer with a mountain backdrop. We continued on through the mountains which changed to high plains desert as we entered Utah. We decided to take a scenic back highway on the way to Moab. This was an excellent choice as the road wound along the Colorado river and afforded some awesome views of some rock formations in the Canyon. We arrived in Moab in the evening, dropped our trailer at the campsite and went to Arches National Park. The setting sun cast some amazing light and color in the park and we went on a short hike to the arch. All in all a very relaxing evening to end a stressful day.