Westbound to Utah

GordonThree wrote:
This December I'm taking the month off to explore the south/west, Utah, Arizona, maybe Nevada, some NM...

Anyhows, I'm not opposed to making some long days to get from Northern Michigan across the plains to the Rockies before switching to a more leisurely pace. Figuring on 10-12 hrs per day, it looks like I can hit Denver by the end of day 2. Along 80 in Iowa I'm sure I can find a rest area / truck stop to catch a few hours rest in, but Denver is a different story.

Should I aim to stop an hour or two east of Denver, stop inside the metro area, or is there somewhere to stop west of the city? I will be on i-70, which as I recall is pretty much a road bordered with mountains on either side.

I'm not looking to "camp" at all in Colorado, in December... so Wallydocking, Cracker Barrel, Bass Pro, something like that would be my choice - I'm not afraid of sleeping in a parking lot or truck stop.

I'll use rv parky, rest stop plus, etc to find where to stop, I'm interested in feedback on when.

I haven't read this thread, so apologies if this has been answered.

Just 2 weeks ago, I drove from Colorado Springs to Moab, UT via I-70 out of Denver. There's a Walmart in Avon, CO that has a huge lot, welcomes RVers, and closes at midnight. It was a very nice stop for the night.


The Walmart at "Frisco", CO or something like that said they don't allow overnight parking, but if we really needed to stop- we could. We actually wheeled in to see about parking for the night (both wife and I had headaches by that point). The lot was much too small for our size. But, there were clearly 4 or 5 vehicles where folks were overnighting "stealthily".

My real issue was that there was no where easy to get fuel for a ways through there. I ultimately wheeled into a Safeway grocery store parking lot and dropped the camper; I stayed with it while my wife and kids went for fuel and came back for me.