Colorado

[ClassicHasClass]

That pic showing a decrepit bit of US-6 is on my bucket list for this summer. I hope they get it fixed in time.

Any road in eastern Colorado on someone's bucket list makes me sad. 

I have a personal attachment to US-6, since I was on it so often on Cape Cod throughout my life. I lived about a third of a mile from it for ten years. I've driven it from Bishop almost to Denver, and from P'town to the Hudson River. And while I'll never drive all of it, I have some ambition to drive all the US routes in the western 11 continental states.

I took about a month to drive it in 2006. Best month of my life. So I know this section of road, and definitely photographed some portion of it, possibly here ( https://www.floodgap.com/roadgap/6/u16/ ).

[Plutonic Panda]

I don't know why people hate on East Colorado. It's actually a very peaceful place.

[kphoger]

I don't know why people hate on East Colorado. It's actually a very peaceful place.

I think the topography isn't as dull as most people make it out to be.  Well, in certain parts, anyway.  Other parts, on the other hand, look like this.

[zzcarp]

Well, this is a good start. Funding coming from people who drive cars and pay taxes for roads should stay for roads funding. We don't need to become like some fucking city like New York City, where drivers are paying extremely high prices to drive to help fund mass transit.

https://www.coloradopolitics.com/2026/05/04/road-funding-amendment-divides-colorado-over-539m-general-fund-shift/

That pic showing a decrepit bit of US-6 is on my bucket list for this summer. I hope they get it fixed in time.

Actually, it seems they're more interested in spending road fees on Medicaid and education than mass transit. But those are things that should come out of general revenue anyway.

One thing to consider: At least in Western Colorado, CDOT does a good job of maintaining state and US highways outside of municipal jurisdictions.  Within the city/town limits, state/US highways are usually the municipality's responsibility.

The rougher stretches are more commonly found inside the cities than on the open highway.  If that is indeed US-6 WITHIN Sterling, that may not be a good representative of actual CDOT-maintained highways.

CDOT does do an okay job of maintaining state roads in the mountains. However, while there may be some municipal maintenance, it doesn't happen in the Denver metro-those streets are all CDOT-maintained. In Westminster, they truncated SR 95 (Sheridan Boulevard) at 88th Avenue so the city could improve and maintain the road across the bridge at US 36 since CDOT wasn't doing it, and it is right by Downtown Westminster and City Hall. CDOT even posted an end sign.

Our legislature and CDOT overall has been pretty anti-car and anti-road recently. And CDOT is even taking toll revenue to help prop up its Bustang program from the new HOT lane revenue.

Colorado transportation officials plan to use toll revenues collected on interstates 25 and 70 to support the state's popular Bustang bus service as they scramble to close a roughly $25 million annual deficit.
...
Ridership on the bus service has doubled in the past three years to more than 350,000 bus trips annually, according to the state transportation department. But, in February, officials told the Colorado Transportation Commission, which oversees CDOT's budget, that state and federal funding that allowed the Bustang program to expand over the past few years would run out by July, leaving the program with an annual deficit of $25-35 million.

While the toll revenues are part of the long-term solution for Bustang, Lew said additional funding will have to be identified to support the I-70 West Line, and officials will continue to have to move money around to prop up the bus service in the short-term.

Note that Bustang's 350,000 person yearly ridership is less than two days of I-25's AADT south of I-70 in Denver.

[Plutonic Panda]

I don't know why people hate on East Colorado. It's actually a very peaceful place.

I think the topography isn't as dull as most people make it out to be.  Well, in certain parts, anyway.  Other parts, on the other hand, look like this.

I actually don't mind that tbh. I just love driving regardless.

[JayhawkCO]

I don't know why people hate on East Colorado. It's actually a very peaceful place.

When you've spent a lot of time clinching every highway out there like I have, I think you'd feel the same way. I don't mind the wide open spaces, but I would definitely take the majority of Kansas over Eastern Colorado. The cities out there also aren't the most charming, so once you break through the monotony and hit a town, it's also not very interesting.

[kphoger]

The cities out there also aren't the most charming, so once you break through the monotony and hit a town, it's also not very interesting.

Did I ever tell you about the definitely-interesting experience I had in an eastern Colorado town back in high school?

I was driving back to Kansas from Denver, and I was starting to get a little hungry for a snack.  I was on US-36 approaching Lindon, so I decided to stop at the Lindon Mercantile.  This is a place I'd seen a dozen times driving by with my parents, with old-fashioned gas pumps out front, a big wooden front porch with dusty vending machines.  So I pulled up, got out, and went up onto the porch.  The vending machines didn't seem to be working anymore, so I knew I'd have to go inside.  It was hard to tell if the place was open, though, as I couldn't see through the front windows.  So I tried the door, found it unlocked, and went in.

Well, it turns out that it wasn't a store anymore.  Someone had apparently bought the place and converted it into a residential home, but left all the Lindon Mercantile stuff outside as part of its charm.  When I walked in, I found myself in the living room, and, directly in front of me, the homeowner was vacuuming the carpet in curlers.  She was a bit surprised when I walked in on her.

I apologized, said I was looking for a snack and thought the place was a store.  She informed me that it hadn't been for years, and I walked out and got in my car.  Shortly after I walked out, she followed me outside to recommend that I might be able to find lunch at such-and-such a place a few miles outside of town.  I thanked her and continued on my way.

Here's what the place looks like today.  I can't find any pictures of what it looked like back then.

[JayhawkCO]

The cities out there also aren't the most charming, so once you break through the monotony and hit a town, it's also not very interesting.

Did I ever tell you about the definitely-interesting experience I had in an eastern Colorado town back in high school?

I was driving back to Kansas from Denver, and I was starting to get a little hungry for a snack.  I was on US-36 approaching Lindon, so I decided to stop at the Lindon Mercantile.  This is a place I'd seen a dozen times driving by with my parents, with old-fashioned gas pumps out front, a big wooden front porch with dusty vending machines.  So I pulled up, got out, and went up onto the porch.  The vending machines didn't seem to be working anymore, so I knew I'd have to go inside.  It was hard to tell if the place was open, though, as I couldn't see through the front windows.  So I tried the door, found it unlocked, and went in.

Well, it turns out that it wasn't a store anymore.  Someone had apparently bought the place and converted it into a residential home, but left all the Lindon Mercantile stuff outside as part of its charm.  When I walked in, I found myself in the living room, and, directly in front of me, the homeowner was vacuuming the carpet in curlers.  She was a bit surprised when I walked in on her.

I apologized, said I was looking for a snack and thought the place was a store.  She informed me that it hadn't been for years, and I walked out and got in my car.  Shortly after I walked out, she followed me outside to recommend that I might be able to find lunch at such-and-such a place a few miles outside of town.  I thanked her and continued on my way.

Here's what the place looks like today.  I can't find any pictures of what it looked like back then.

Yeah. I don't want to just pile onto the "small towns are dying" trope, but outside of a very few cities > 20 miles east of I-25, almost all the stores are closed. My wife was a admissions counselor for a year for one of the local universities, and her region was northeastern Colorado. Other than the Greeley area, it was pretty dire. She ended up staying in a hotel one night in Holyoke so she could visit some of the surrounding high schools the next morning and she said she didn't see a single car drive by past 7:00 PM.

[Plutonic Panda]

I don't know why people hate on East Colorado. It's actually a very peaceful place.

When you've spent a lot of time clinching every highway out there like I have, I think you'd feel the same way. I don't mind the wide open spaces, but I would definitely take the majority of Kansas over Eastern Colorado. The cities out there also aren't the most charming, so once you break through the monotony and hit a town, it's also not very interesting.

There's an old liquor store( it sure if it pretty close once you're on I-70 head west to Denver it's off the highway. Nice folks who run it. Not going to get too into detail but I hit it up and decided to just drive north a bit and dip back down from I-25 once which added a good 6 hours extra but it was a nice drive. I rather enjoyed the scenery but I can see how it'd get old fast.

Every time I go from OKC to Nederland to camp I'll stop by for a beverage and stock on some drinks for my campsite. They're not the easiest to stop but again super nice folks. Even offered me to stay once because I was exhausted after the I-70 drive through Kansas after eating about a dozen sliders from Cozy Inn in Salina(a must if you haven't had them).

[pderocco]

Did I ever tell you about the definitely-interesting experience I had in an eastern Colorado town back in high school?

I was driving back to Kansas from Denver, and I was starting to get a little hungry for a snack.  I was on US-36 approaching Lindon, so I decided to stop at the Lindon Mercantile.  This is a place I'd seen a dozen times driving by with my parents, with old-fashioned gas pumps out front, a big wooden front porch with dusty vending machines.  So I pulled up, got out, and went up onto the porch.  The vending machines didn't seem to be working anymore, so I knew I'd have to go inside.  It was hard to tell if the place was open, though, as I couldn't see through the front windows.  So I tried the door, found it unlocked, and went in.

Well, it turns out that it wasn't a store anymore.  Someone had apparently bought the place and converted it into a residential home, but left all the Lindon Mercantile stuff outside as part of its charm.  When I walked in, I found myself in the living room, and, directly in front of me, the homeowner was vacuuming the carpet in curlers.  She was a bit surprised when I walked in on her.

I apologized, said I was looking for a snack and thought the place was a store.  She informed me that it hadn't been for years, and I walked out and got in my car.  Shortly after I walked out, she followed me outside to recommend that I might be able to find lunch at such-and-such a place a few miles outside of town.  I thanked her and continued on my way.

Here's what the place looks like today.  I can't find any pictures of what it looked like back then.

When you look at the map, the places like Lindon, Anton, Arickaree remind me of the names you see along railroads for ancient watering stops. Some of them have almost nothing there at all.

[Plutonic Panda]

Another article about the funding bill in Colorado:

https://coloradosun.com/2026/05/07/road-funding-fight-colorado-initiative-175-house-bill-1430/