Day 10 – Grand Junction, CO to Salt Lake City, UT

Well, the sleep was decent, considering we slept on hard sand. I woke up feeling like a bake potato wrapped in aluminum…it felt good outside, but the sun came up at about 6:00am, so the tent warmed up really fast. We all got up and got ready, I checked us in and out (b/c they were closed when we got there at night, but they told us that we could pay in the morning…which was extremely nice), we ate lunch at Burger King (where Brad and I consumed Brad’s new delight: kiwi-strawberry Icee), and then we set out for Utah.

In Utah, we decided to check out Arches National Park, which was about 30 miles out of the way (one way). We typed the park into the navigation system, and it led us to a road that we questioned going down b/c there was no sign. We decided to try it out, so we drove back…and back…and back. We came upon a guy in a truck who informed us that we probably wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to the park unless we had 4-wheel drive (which we don’t), but we could go down the main road a few more mile to the main entrance. We drove down the trail until we came to a rock containing dinosaur footprints. We hung out there for while, took some pictures, headed back to the main road and then to the National Park in Moab. Our short little off-road adventure was interesting. For me, it was fun just to be off-road on the trail and propping up on rocks (only small rocks of course b/c we had no water and no cell phone reception to call for help if we broke down)…which I’m pretty sure manifested some of my redneck up-bringing…special thanks to Mom & Dad and especially to Matthew!

When we finally got to the park, we got some water then ventured out to see the various arches. We took some pretty sweet pictures along the way. To see the famous Delicate Arch, we had to get out of the truck and walk to a viewing point. The first viewing point was pretty far away, so we decided to trek up to the upper viewing point…and a trek it was! When we got to the upper viewing point, we were all 3 out of breath (especially Brad and I). We found out that the upper viewing point really didn’t have a much better view than the other point, so Austin decided to trek further to get a better shot (and Brad and I agreed to follow)…which did not give us a much better shot than before…so of course we trekked further. Eventually, we got ready to head back to the truck.

We left the park and got back onto the interstate. We stopped at the first town we came to in order to fill up…our truck and our tummies. We ended up talking with an older gentleman there about eternity. He seemed a little indifferent in his views of “religion” and eternity. We left him with a Cahill book, a Gospel tract, and a copy of the Gospel of John. I forgot his name, but please lift up a short prayer for him now.

It was so late that we just decided to bypass Provo and go straight to Salt Lake City. When we arrived in Salt Lake City, we got a hotel. Austin and Brad went out to see the Mormon temple, while I stayed back and cleaned myself us and posted some stuff on the website.