A crow visited our remote campsite at about 6 AM. Its incessent squaking woke me up like an alarm clock. Some combination of jetlag (it was 8 AM at home) and going to bed a bit earlier that night meant that I was ready to start moving. I woke followed by Jose and Guillermo; Nina took a few more hours to get moving. We made breakfast and passed the soccer ball for a bit before deciding to pack up the campsite.

Packing up

We all were ready to hike one of those nearby mountains. We set off down one of the trails which abruptly stopped at the base of the largest mountain. Signs at camp read “Climb at your own risk”, so we did. At first, it was scaling large, mostly horiontal and flat bolders but as we got higher, the gaps between bolders grew and it got much harder to climb.

Trail leading to the mountain

SOOOO strong! – Nina uninterested

Group picture break

Found this little guy

“Its not that far of a jump!”

“I’ll wait for you guys over here.”

View from the top. See the snowy rockies in the distance.

The top of the mountain wasn’t high enough for Guillermo

It proved equally difficult getting down the mountain. Nina led the way and got us back to the base safely.

JUMP!

We drove for a bit to the nearest McDonald’s for a snack and a healthy dose of Free WiFi. We regrouped to check our budget and plan out our destination fot the night, Salt Lake City.

A little more than an hour of driving later, we stoped for Thai food and grabbed some groceries from Walmart. We drove nonstop to the hotsprings in Utah. We were more than excited about a refreshing dip in natural hotsprings but were disappoainted to find that this privately owned hotspring had been turned into a swimming pool that attracted hudreds of people. Also, it was $7 to get in. We passed and instead used their showers to freshen up.

We burned some firewood that we bought nearby and made a rice, egg and tuna dinner. I carved chopsticks out of twigs for us to eat with. We went to bed early again after watching the sun set behind the rocky mountains afar. It began to rain.