Colorado! (Day One)

Wow.
Today, I will write about all the events that took place between Oroville and Moab.
We drove for ehh about 15 hours of driving, and it has been a long, eventful day.

First off, Some photos, and the story will go along with them :)

This was just the beginning of our day.. Already dodging things! Good thing Michael was driving! 

Below was our view of the Feather River Canyon as we headed out of town.

Then, lot's of long, windy roads that just kept going and going! Snow on the ground already, I knew I was in for a cold trip! 

Cool train tracks

More snow!

Then we get to see mountains! (They looked really cool!)

On the "Lonliest Road in America"

Cool clouds

Before entering Nevada

While in Nevada, we are checking for directions on the map, while looking for our exit. 

At this moment, I'm looking at the map and Michael pulls off the Interstate about two exits too early and we see two Nevada Highway Patrol cars sitting there. I thought "hey, let's ask them!"  We see the car motioning us to the left, we pull in, the car pulls behind us and that's when we're like..... Are you serious?

We get the ticket THEN the directions! 

haha Officer "Whitehead"

And, more photos! 

Michael - Post ticket..

They called this a rest stop!!!! HAHA!!

Then we visited Ruth Copper Mines! It was so cool! here are a few pics!

So muddy!!

Then, before it was dark we passed through Ely (shown below), and drove on to Moab. 

We were making great time on the loneliest road!  On our way descending down a mountain range in Utah we almost got in a potentially horrific accident because as we were flying down the hill going 75-80 mph I see this Elk crossing the road in the right lane (to our right), and I shout in surprise, which caught Michael's attention and at that moment he swerves to the right and I realize there's another one to the left! We split the gap right down the middle and nearly missed getting taken out by a huge (literally huge) Elk! They were literally as big or bigger than our car, and they were walking right across the road! SOO CRAZY. It was such crazy timing, Michael's car handling skills are incredible! (he had his low beams on because of the oncoming traffic that had ironically slowed for the Elk that crossed on into our side..) 

We ended up making it to Moab at 12 (and also almost taking out a family of deer about 2 minutes outside of town), and I'm thinking Utah is going to look pretty sweet once we get some daylight! The light shining from the moon on the snow was so awesome!