I guess thats why they call it "the Rockies"

A guy I am going to be working with for NCC picked me up on Thursday night to head out to Las Vegas, which is where I will be spending the next six months proceeded by 6 months in Reno, doing land conservation work and non native specie removal of plantlife.

We spent Thursday night about an hour off of Rt. 70 with a friend of J's. The drive up there progressed into the mountains. The roads were windy and icy. Kind of absurd thinking that just an hour away in Denver, it was at least fourty degrees warmer. When we woke up on Friday morning it was about 33 degrees and relatively gray. We did stop at a really nice breakfast and lunch diner that had a very broad selection of bagels and other pastries to choose from. We grabbed coffee and bagles and headed out.

Driving back down through the mountains and onto 70 the ride was continuously impressive. The scenery is amazing and it immediately came to mind why these mountains are called The Rocky Mountains. There was however, some pretty wet snow that I would imagine make it difficult to drive in.

On the way the different kinds of scenery we continued to see was nothing short of amazing.
And the types of landscape you see is all so similar but all so vast and differential at the same time. I have to say my favorite parts of the drive where when we were driving sandwhiched between giant mountains of rock and can barely see the sun from where you are.
Then again, I also really enjoyed the red rock mountains. However my absolute favorite part of the drive was in Utah somewhere just before Arizona (there is about a 20 minute drive through the bottom of AZ) Driving through these massive mountains of rock, starting at rough500 feet and winding down to about 1,000 feet.

Its nothing short of incredible, and I cannot say it enough.

It took us roughly 12 hours to drive from start to end. But I am so very glad to have gotten this opportunity to take that drive.

Pictures will come later, but I am very tired after my first day of orientation and have to be up in about 6 hours. Tommorow begins official training