I know where you are, Kat - I have driven over Medicine Bow on the way from Laramie to Saratoga! The snow stays up there - it had snowed again the week previously, and it was June when I was on the road.
We had a horrible journey in 1983, when my parents came out to visit us in South Africa. We had gone on a three week trip to the North, and then on to visit the Kruger Park. About 3 days into the park, my dad had a mild heart attack, which meant me staying on the camp, while Ian, mum and dad went out after dark (with a permit) to go to the next exit and out to the hospital at Phalaborwa. They saw more game on that journey than the rest of the holiday! Anyway, dad had to spend a week in hospital, so we moved up to Letaba, the nearest camp. The first day we went to visit dad, there was a dead hippo lying on a little side track off the road out of the park. It was freshly dead so we went for a look. I had heard how vultures enter carcases - it's true! They get out the same way at first. We had to endure the smell of it as we drove past for the days after that. When my dad came out, we decided to head south again and go to Swaziland and hotel accommodation for dad. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the border it was quite late. we got our passports stamped out of S. Africa, but by then the Swazi border was shut, and we were left in no-man's land. Ian turned the LR round to find that S. Africa had put down the barrier and shut up shop. Knowing he had a frail passenger and 2 young kids, he opened the barrier and drove us back through. The guards didn't do much to try and stop us. We then had to drive all night on the winding roads over the rest of the Drakensberg Range down to Natal, in one hell of a storm. My dad survived the trip reasonably well considering we could hardly see where we were going apart from with the lightning, and it was at altitude. We were really glad to get down to the coast in the early morning. The first thing we did when we got to Durban was to get my mum and dad into an hotel for a few days' rest.
I'm off to Sri Lanka in about a month's time. If this thread's still around, and if there is anything worth reporting, I'll add it.