We make the first turn on the bypass of the highway that Google is suggesting we do and head off down this side road. It looks okay and there are a couple of cars with us as we progress further along. We eventually see a sign that indicates that this road is not for commercial vehicles and they expect local traffic only. At this point we are a few miles in and figure that we can push through. Shortly afterwards there's a gentleman sitting in a chair next to a truck just watching people drive by. I kind of expected him to be directing traffic or talking to the drivers as we headed this way but nothing. He just sits there as cars and trucks drive past him. Almost immediately the road changes from paved to dirt and you can see that this area has seen some of the same rain that caused the mudslide on the highway as the dirt road is grooved and along the edges there are some small washouts. This is the road that Google is suggesting we take?!? We continue on it since there are now a growing group of cars in front of us and we figure we can't all be wrong? The drive is a bit scary but also pretty and there's at least one point where we drive past a pasture and three of the cows have gotten through the fencing and are just wondering down the road like they are on a Sunday stroll. Google suggests we make this steep cutback onto another dirt road that looks to be in even worse shape than this one. Since the rest of the cars are continuing ahead, we decide to follow them at this point. They are primarily local plates so hopefully they know a way through this that they are taking and not that we are following some random dude to his ranch. Eventually, climbing up to another pass, the road that existed on Google Maps just disappears so now we don't even have a reference for where we are. We cross into another county and suddenly there are road workers there controlling traffic, somewhat indicating which direction to go. It's a huge relief and what Google was quoting to be a 3 hour increase to get around this section of closed interstate proved to only be about an hour and a half.
Since we had plans in Denver and we were concerned about the state of the side roads in the area considering a section of the interstate had been closed due to mudslide, we stuck with the highway which carries the modern Route 6 on it instead of doing the original routing. We decide to not do this when we get to a town called Frisco. From here Route 6 heads through Loveland Pass which I had read was really pretty and appeared to be paved so we decided to take this path. Frisco was a really cute little town with a section of their main street closed down for a little shopping area and was a welcome nice sight after the kind of strained start for the day. We start to head up to the pass and see a ton of people biking up the mountain. God bless these people because it's hard enough for me to walk around at these altitudes let alone bike up a mountain. Regardless, we make it to the top and see a ton of cars parked around and aren't really sure what's going on. When we get closer we can see that there are some hiking trails around here as well as a sign for the Continental Divide which a lot of people are posing at. Rather than fight for parking here, we headed down the road a little bit more and parked there for some pictures. It was a gorgeous overlook and very much worth the side trip. While we were there and just walking around to take pictures and talk I could feel by breath begin to get strained a little. Again, God bless these people that are out here hiking up the ridge to the peak.
We drive from here through Denver to where our hotel is for tonight and tomorrow. We arrive a little early but wanted to hopefully get our stuff into a room before heading to our escape room. We are told that they cannot check us in until 3, which should be fine since our escape room is at 4:15. We bring everything in and make a small encampment in the lobby and wait out the clock. While we are there, three additional families come and attempt to check in and are issued rooms. Frustrating but we are told that the issue is that we made the request to be on an upper floor and those rooms weren't ready yet. Fine. We wait out the clock until 3 and are issued a room. We bring everything upstairs, dump it off in the room and head back out again to get to our escape room. We make it there with a little bit of time to spare and head on up.
As we head up the stairs to the escape room, there's a QR code for the waiver that you will need to fill out so we stop in the hallway and start to fill it out. While we are there doing it, one of the other game masters came out and asked what room we were doing and informed us that we needed to keep going up. We knew this already because there was a big sign next to the QR code that let us know but we moved on anyway. I'm sure that game master was wondering how we were going to escape a room if we couldn't figure out how to get tot he room with large signs showing us the way on the walls. After we get to the room, we are greeted by our game master and given the standard run down on the rules and given our story. We are pirates that have been captured by Blackbeard and we need to get our gold and sail away before he returns to the ship from his celebration of catching us. As we enter the room, we see the clock from the last team that were in the room who had escaped with a few minutes left. Hopefully we can do better. We crank through the puzzles in the room, only getting stuck for very small periods of time and eventually make it out with over 10 minutes left on the clock! The game master seemed pretty impressed but I would wager that that's part of his job description.
From here we decide to go get some dinner at Sam's No 3. Apparently this place has been featured in Diners, Drive-ins and Dives so we figured what the heck. We managed to get a seat immediately and ordered. Other than the Pork Green Chili and the apps though, the food wasn't honestly all that exciting. Oh well. I guess we have been having good luck lately so that was bound to end eventually. We head back to the room and relax a bit before heading to bed. We know we are going to have an early day tomorrow.