Day 7, Crested Butte, CO to Ritchfield, UT

Taken last night, silhouette of Mount Crested Butte.


Last night, i got to sleep in a bed...thank god...I needed the appropriate rest.
Woke up a little later than planned, as usual...and slwoly got ready to go. Packed up our belongings and stuffed them inside my car + a snowboard and snowboarding boots...ugh...now we really can't see anything out the back window of the car...hopefully them Utah cops won't be too frazzled by that.
Time to go. Since the car had not moved in 2 days, we thought it would be a good idea to turn the car on and let it warm up a bit...since it had been sitting in the snow afterall.....so i put the key in the ignition, press the clutch down, turn the key..."rrahrrahrrahrrahrrah".............nothing....
.........hmmm...must be extra cold.....try again...."rrahrrahrarahrrahrrahrrahrrah"....nope.....no go.......what the F!?.....so we push the car out of the drive way onto level ground.......try again.....but it just does the same thing. damn it!...aaaaaand now we're behind. grr...

Ryan starts blabbing off to me all sorts of possibilities that may be the cause of my car not starting....and no disrespect to Ryan, because he understands this sh*t and I don't.....but i just had no idea what he was talking about. "Pop the hood" ryan says, and he pulls the dipstick out and examines the tip very carefuly........"figures!" he says, "your oil level is really low, there must be a sensor that doesnt allow your car to start when the oil level is too low".....................mmmmmk then, lets go get oil. We walked down to the corner gas station, and after much deliberation about which oil to buy, the one that isn't really made for my car, or the other one that isnt exactly made for my car ,we bought one that probably wasn't made for my car, but will work. and sure enough, it did. Ryan is a genius and so is my brother in law (i called him for advice on the oil).....

aaaaaand we were on our way, a little behind but we were finaly on our way. Drove through some pretty strange scenery on our way out of Colorado, frozen lakes in the middle of desert landscapes, the gorgeous Black Canyon of Gunnison....with huge snowy mountain tops in the background. Our destination, Arches National Park in Utah.



















After a few stops, and an incredible drive on scenic byway 128 through winding red rock Canyons along some rapids, right on the southern outer edge of Arches National Park, we finaly made it to the park by 6:45. No entry fee. WOOHOO.

We decided that we wanted to drive straight to delicate arch to try and get some sunset images of it...which left us with about 30 minutes to get to the trail head, a climb up to the arch, and not long enough to photograph it before we had to head back down to try and make it off the trail before it was completely dark. Mind you, we had about a quarter of a water bottle left, and no flashlights.....so we had to book it, and conserve the water.



We made it up in time, although the sunset never really came due to overcast-ness, we took pictures (i took nothing spectacular at allll), and made it back down as planned, drove to a hotel and passed out for the evening, it was a great day.