DENVER — Heavy traffic is impacting travel time for those driving this holiday weekend. CDOT says expect heavy delays on westbound I-70 through Friday night.
Sunday Eastbound I-70 coming down the mountain will see long delays.
For beautiful and spacious skies, passing amber waves of grain, getting to those purple mountain majesties is actually quite a pain.
Russ Veazey – Buffalo Moon Coffee Shop. “It was Bumper to bumper, lots of traffic,” said Stephanie Demster, who came from Arizona to stay in Colorado over the 4th of July.
“Going up in that traffic, they are going to be stuck for hours and hours and hours,” said Linda McCleary who, on the opposite side of traffic, was traveling back home to Ft. Collins.
Instead of the crackle of fireworks and a lit up sky travelers on westbound I-70 Thursday night heard the rumble of engines and watched the red glow of brake lights.
“You should have left yesterday if you were planning on going up to the mountains,” said Genesee’s Buffalo Moon Coffee Shop owner, Russ Veazey.
“The honking of the horns … and people getting irate … that’s probably the closest you’re going to get to fireworks,” he said.
For Veazey heavy holiday traffic means a steady stream of business.
“Well they can get off over here and have a coffee drink or something and then get right back in line and not lose their place,” he said of the many travelers who take a pit stop out of the long traffic lines,” said Veazey.
Pull off is exactly what two German visitors did.
“Much, very heavy traffic. Traffic jam. So we abort our mission and go here for a cup,” said Martin Neugebauer.
While they were aborting, others were just killing time.
“We don’t usually get to spend all that much time together sitting for long periods of time so that was kind of a treat,” said Dempster.
“You play games, you sing songs. You talk about other adventures you want to go on,” said McCleary.
But for every traffic jam above the fruited plain, it’s still America, America, a thoroughfare of freedom beat.
“It’s a beautiful celebration because I love living in this country,” said McCleary.