We left Denver at 8 am to head to the Rocky Mountains. We said bye to Andy Tropin and wished him happy birthday before heading out. Our first stop was a Safeway in Boulder, Colorado to get some food for our camping trip. We got a massive sandiwhc for $7 to share for lunch AND dinner! We got a quick car wash too and then drove to the Rocky Mountains, arriving around 10:30 am.

The drive through the mountains went really quickly, possibly because of our long drive ahead to Moab. However, the scenery was absolutely gorgeous. The foliage was incredible, and the trees already had the fall color scheme. There were a lot of different terrains within in the park, which made for some interesting contrasts between sections of the park. Toward the end of the park there was a beautiful lake and in the middle there were snow-capped mountains. Super cool! The highest elevation we reached was close to 12,000 feet, which dwarfed the 4,000 or so feet we reached on our drive through the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive at the start of our trip. The temperature fluctuated from about 72 degrees at the start of our drive to 47 degrees toward the higher elevation. Also, a bunch of our bags of chips popped because of the higher altitude. Unfortunately we didn’t see much wildlife, but the Rockies were absolutely stunning.

By 12:15 pm we were out of the Rockies. The road we took led us through more beautiful mountains and farms and open stretches of land in the Colorado countryside. We struggled to find a picnic area for lunch because of a lack of civilization, but we happened upon Colorado meadows campground in (I have no idea), Colorado around 1:45. The only other life we saw was a guy walking his dog. Otherwise it was totally silent at the campground. We enjoyed a quarter of the mammoth sandwich, chips, apples, and cookies before leaving at 2:15 pm.

We hopped back on the road and drove through more farms, land, etc. Not much happening in that part of Colorado other than beautiful scenery and farm land. I had been driving the whole day since leaving Denver but got tired around 6, so Alex took overt in Grand Junction, Colorado. We crossed into Utah at 6:20 and got to Moab around 7. It took a half hour to get from the highway to the town, and we were surprised when we came upon a happening town! We drove around and explored a bit, checking out hotels and restaurants and all the tourists (like us) who were doing the same thing.

Per Andy Tropin’s recommendation, we stayed at Sand Flats Recreation Center about 10 minutes away from the main town. It was super cheap to set up a tent site and essentially in the same terrain as Arches National Park. The mountains and stars provided a phenomenal backdrop for our first camping experience in Utah. We arrived around 8 and hung out for the rest of the night. We built a fire, set up our tent, ate dinner, watched the first episode of the new season of South Park on Alex’s iphone, and went to bed relatively early (10:30 pm) so we could get moving early the next day to go to both Arches and Canyonland National Parks.

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