40 down 10 to go

I've now reached the milestone of having visited 40 of the 50 US states.  I'm quite proud of this, and feeling ambitious as to knock of 3 or 4 more by the end of the summer.  Upon arriving back in Laramie on Wednesday morning, Kory and I threw all of our stuff into his jeep and headed south to Colorado to do some Laundry at his dad's and then hit the road.  We finally left around 6pm and by the time I had played almost all of the songs I wanted to hear on my I-pod, we stopped in Frisco off of I-70 for a really deliscious meatball pizza that we took to go.  We finally got to grand junction around midnight and realized that in order to get to the camping area in Colorado National Monument, we had to drive 19 miles of winding roads with extremely steep drop offs.  In 30 mph winds, we set up our tent and went to sleep.  Driving out of the park in the early morning was beautiful and the dramatic landscape made the 19 miles seem a lot shorter.

We hit the road to Utah and arrived in Moab around noon.  We drove into Arches national park and did the 4 mile roundtrip hike to see delicate arch, famous for its spot on Utah licence plates. We drove around Moab in search of camping and wound up staying at the KOA.  After enjoying a beer and some dinner at Moab Brewery we enjoyed the wi-fi that's available at all KOA's.  We planned to wake up around 5 to watch the sun rise on landscape arch but overslept and decided to sleep in a bit longer.  We finally left at 6 and hiked in to the arch only to find out that due to a rockfall 20 years ago, you can no longer actually walk up to it.  Bummer!

This is Landscape Arch

and this is the view of Delicate arch through another 

arch where the wind was so strong that I almost got 

blown over.  I am wind surfing in this shot in case you

can't tell.

Upon returning to the parking lot at landscape arch, Kory concluded that for the sake of being able to take either of our cars on road trips this summer, I MUST learn to drive manual.  Lucky for me we had Kory's Dad's dodge diesel pickup truck which allowed me to accidentally shift from 2nd gear to 5th gear without stalling the beast.  After a few miles we switched back so Kory could get us to the highway.  I managed about another 100 miles of driving on I-70(through a narrow canyon I might add) before I put putted my way to a stop about 50 feet past an off ramp.  Kory drove the rest of the way back to Fort Collins and then decided I needed to drive from the grocery store back to his dad's house in a different vehicle, his jeep.  Hopefully with some practice, my passengers with no longer need cervical collars to protect their spines while I drive.  Now that I can drive both manual and automatic, I figured that I'm twice as likely to see my last ten states before I ever even leave north america.  Sweet!