Day 7 Vail to Vegas - Monday

The next morning after planning on getting up early (ended up around 9-10am), we had to deice the driveway manually with some basic snow hoes and plastic snow scoops. This process took another hour, to hour and a half and some serious pushing of non-4 wheeled vehicles, including Randall's 4Runner. After we were able to get the cars up the driveway's hill, we then retrieved my car, and headed towards the Arches National Park in Moab, UT. The road to Moab was an exciting one to say the least, we drove West on I-70 as it went through some of the most mountainous terrain in America. We encountered a few snow pockets, but all in all the drive wasn't bad to Moab and there were some cool sights along the way. Once we got to the Arches National Park the weather was pretty cloudy, and overcast but we still had some of the most amazing views of the journey. We consolidated into one vehicle and were able to see the majority of the park in about an hour and a half. Might have been the quickest anyone had been in and out of the park, at least I'd like to think so. After leaving the park, the sun had started to go down but I had no idea what was in store for us later.

Moab, UT is somewhat in the desert, and was definitely warm enough that I didn't consider what would happen next. A few hours after leaving Moab, we entered a snowstorm (maybe a blizzard), and I experienced some of the worst weather I had ever seen. Partially blind, and only partially getting traction for three to four hours we drove on I-70 about 25-50 mph towards I-15 for what should have been some of the fastest driving on the trip. (The speed limit was 80 mph in a good portion of this section.) I was constantly loosing traction but never bad enough to stop completely, although going 15 mph in a 80 mph zone might as well be stopped completely. Luckily there weren't many other people as dumb as us to drive through this area, although a few truckers would fly past us, causing whiteouts each time. Once we were in the southern portion of Utah the snowstorm subsided and we decided that we would at least make it to Vegas before calling it a night. Almost 13 hours after leaving Vail, CO we ended up in Las Vegas, NV trying to figure out how we survived while eating the best dinner I've had in years.