Coloradans... acclimated to 'winter'. It doesn't concern them. They are prepared.

As I was driving out of Gunnison over the pass and into Montrose snow fell. Temps were in the low 20s. Signs aplenty warning of 'ice' on the roads. We had no idea if we could make it, becoming a "Film at 11" news clip about another ignorant family of Californians who got themselves stranded in a blizzard and had to be rescued. To Coloradans it was a 'hint' of winter to come.

As much as I daydream, (and night-dream), about moving there one day I have those moments of lucidity when I realize that in all likelihood I could never handle those long winters. Loading our cars on Sunday morning the snow fell without pause; cars covered in snow... ice clinging to everything. The kids were a hallmark moment... throwing snowballs, shouting with glee, building small snowmen..... and I was convinced we were about to become the Donner Party.

We had watched my grandson's football game in perfect conditions, even a little 'warm'. The next morning we're on the island of misfit toys.

We were a caravan of three cars.... I was bringing up the rear. We were on I-70 nearing the Utah border when the last chunk of ice from my daughter's cars hit the pavement forcing me to turn on my wipers.

The hills and mountains surrounding Crested Butte, Gunnison, are strewn with homes built on the hillsides with long and twisting DIRT and gravel driveways getting to them... HOW IN THE HELL do they get to their homes, or from their homes, in winter?

It's a different world... I'd be a fish out of water... yet even so, I might chance it.