Day 4: Meat Machine Gets Cooked

-5:45am
Wakeup. The night was really rough last night, winds were blowing around 45mph, and the tent sounded like a banchee screaming. Besides the wind, it got pretty cold, around 40 degrees, and our air mattress totally deflated, so we woke up sleeping on a flat mattress on top of a piece of plywood

-6:18am
Left the campsite and made our way out of Arches National Park

-7:20am
Arrive at Island in the Sky Visitor’s center inside of Canyonlands National Park. This visitors center is on top of a cliff with a sweet dirt road that heads down inside. We go the meat machine ready to rip it up, and headed down into the canyon

-8am
After making it safely to the bottom of “Death Road”, we started the climb back to the top, and now it was an all out blizzard. The roads that had been sketchy as hell when bone dry were now covered with an inch of snow, and the visibility was little to none. Thankfully we made it out safely

-9am
Back in Moab, UT. Bought a new air mattress from some corner store for wayyyy too much money, but it beats sleeping on the ground for sure

-10:30am
Monticello, UT. Super snowy outside, basically a blizzard on the highway, still trucking along looking for monument valley

-11:52am
Made it to Monument Valley. This is the iconic shot from the movie Forrest Gump, but naturally we decided to ride longboards down the hill, and shotgun beers of course

-12:48pm
Got gas somewhere in the Navajo Nation

-2:55pm
Horseshoe bend, Page Arizona. This is an iconic bend in the Colorado river, that people flock to from all over. There were so many tourists at this stop I though my head was gonna explode, but the view was pretty dope

-3:45pm
Headed out from Page, Arizona towards our destination of Zion National Park

-6pm
Shit… After nothing but smooth sailing for the last couple of days, we’ve hit a solid set back in our mode of transportation. Cruising up a mountain into the sun somewhere in the middle of a Utah forest, with rows of high trees on both sides, some dumbass deer decided today was his day to destroy the meat machine. Out of absolutely nowhere this moron jumps out in front of me, and smashes into my drivers side. The meat machine takes no prisoners, and this deer goes flying 35 feet across the road and is dead on impact after it’s encounter with my 6,000 pound iron tank of a car. Meat machine took a cosmetic beating, kinda looks like its been thru hell and back, but drivability is prime as always, and we kept on trucking to Zion even with a missing grille, headlights, turn signal, and deer guts all over the side of my door

-7pm
Dinner at some mega sports bar in the town next to Zion (Springdale, UT)

-9pm
Camp is set up and the stars are out in full force just like the other night. Tomorrow we were planning to do some super cool hikes, but since meat machine is now cooked, we have to wakeup at the butt crack of dawn and take it to the local mechanic “Bill” who fixes cars in his garage. I’m hoping that we can jerry rig something to keep the meat machine running until we make it to state college, otherwise I’m gonna be stuck in Utah for a couple days…