Road Tripping, back to Breck

So we got up late and got out of town. I was feeling pretty rough and not doing too well. I almost needed to pull over a couple of times to release my stomach but I managed to get through it somehow. We were headed to the Grand Canyon and then Telluride to stay the night with Alissa. The first stop was the Hoover Dam. The traffic leading up to it was horrible. We probably wasted at least an hour just waiting there. We stopped and took a few pictures. Checked out the construction on the new bridge they're putting in over the whole thing, which will hopefully get rid of the traffic jam, and kept on cruising down the road. It was more of the same desert driving we were getting quite used to by now. At one of the gas stops Arthur got a bit bored and picked up a plastic bow and arrow set with a sucker end. We were trying to get it to stick to the car and only after a pile of attempts did the stupid thing actually stick but I filmed a few of the attempts for you to check out.





That entertainment didn't last much longer than it took to finally stick an arrow to the car so we loaded up and kept cruising. This was when I started to feel properly rough. It wasn't a pleasant drive but I hung in there and we kept on cruising. We must have hit a time warp because we were cruising at anywhere between 60 and 80 mph but it seemed like every hour we'd only knock off 20 miles. We were getting quite unhappy about the prospect since we hadn't even hit the Grand Canyon yet and we still had to make it all the way out to Telluride. It turns out the timing was quite good in the end, at least for the Grand Canyon since we hit it right around sunset and got some really good pictures. It was a bit rubbish though because Arthur had run out of batteries on his camera and right when we were taking some really good photos of our sillouttes on the rim of the canyon my battery ran out. Oh well, at least we got a few good pictures and also a couple of videos. The first one maybe not be too funny for you guys but when I was taking it I started out with quite a bit of sky and Arthur says "Less sky, more canyon" before I realised what I was doing. Like I said, in our delirious state it was quite funny but maybe not for you. Anyway, check them out.





With the sun gone down there was no point in hanging around so we hit the road again and headed back to Colorado. We made the only major navigational error of the whole trip when we somehow missed a turn off to stay on 160 to go passed four corners. Instead we headed down into New Mexico and added a half hour onto our drive. Buts whats a half hour in a days drive? It was looking like we where going to arrive in Telluride around 3:00am. Which had us concerned for a while because Alissa told us the road was closed between 10:00pm and 5:00am due to construction. Fortunately it was the road headed north out of Telluride and we were coming in from the south so we were safe. The final section of the drive was pretty crazy. We were working on not much sleep and hangovers, the road got a bit snowy in patches and to top it all off there were elk roaming on the road around every corner. We managed to make it through and got into Telluride at 3:00am and had to wake up Alissa to let us in. It was our second 15 hour day and we wanted some sleep. We were greeted by her roommate and boyfriend? in a completely dark living room where they had craked open a bunch of glow sticks and sprayed them everywhere, oh and she was completely naked. It looked like quite a good little party but we were thinking more along the lines of finally getting some sleep so we hit the sack pronto to try and recover.

We woke up late again, it seems like we've had a noon to 5:00am schedule on this trip, and met Alissa for lunch in town. It was good to see her again and hang out but after a quick tour fo the town she had to go back to work and we had to get to Breck. Arthur was catching a flight from Denver the next day and he still needed to sort out a bunch of things. So we hit the road for the final leg of our road trip. The scenery was really nice on the drive back but we were quite happy to be on the final leg. The trip had really taken it out of us. We finally got onto I-70 and back onto familiar territory. We passed Vail, which had lost its snow and managed to roll into Breck by about 6:00. It was noce to be back home finally and know that I didn't have to get back into the car for another 15 hour day. I went to bed leaving Arthur to sort out all his stuff. The next morning I drove Arthur to the airport and dropped him off. And so ended our two weeks of living out of a car together.

It's now time for me to recover before we head down to Canon City to start raft guiding. I've dug myself into quite a deep hole and I'm not sure how easy it will be to get out. Hopefully with some good food, good rest and not doing shit I'll manage to claw my way back just in time to runi myself again when the raft season starts up. As much fun as all this is, I think I'm getting a bit too old for it. Not the snowboarding, travelling, rafting and all that, but the college party atmosphere. I think that after the summer ends and I've closed the book on the rafting I'll be good and ready to settle down to just relaxing into a normal lifestyle.

Road tripping