My pal Beth and I went on an epic backpacking trip to Utah, which involved us road tripping to Utah from Wisconsin (a nice 25-hour drive). The backpacking in canyons was awesome, and it was probably one of the best traveling experiences of our life. I think though that our trip home is worth mentioning. We had to drive back home through the Rockies in my car that isn’t used to the rockies. The trip there had already caused my water pump to break, so we were in constant fear of it breaking down after it was spewing coolant in the desert mountains of Utah. Driving through the Rockies on the way back was intense: there was a huge snowstorm. This was only the second time I had driven through mountains, so I was freaking out. Luckily Beth and I have winter driving experience, or we would have been in trouble. Snow was pouring down in the biggest flakes I have ever seen and cars were going off road into rails on dangerous grated roads left and right. We kept our cool because we knew the prize that was on the other end of the rockies. After 6 hours of driving through a white out snowstorm and missing the spectacular view of the mountains again (it was dark when we drove through them on the way there), we made it to our prized destination: Casa Bonita. Casa Bonita is like the Disneyland of Mexican restaurants and used to be a chain in the southwest, but the only one left was in Denver. We had seen it in an episode of south park and knew it had to be one of our destinations after our long back packing excursions. When we got there it was early afternoon but the place was already filling up. There was a huge queue for us to wait and we couldn’t even seen the wonders inside. When we finally got our crappy buffet food—that gave no justice to the very wonderful Mexican cuisine we both love, we got to see the paradise of cheesy American/Mexican commercialism come to life. This place was multi-leveled, and entertainment packed. We got to enjoy live entertainment; mariachi bands and cliff jumpers. As well as go through silly attractions. The food was mediocre at best, and I started to feel sick after eating most of it but it was totally worth it after almost dying in our car trip through the dangerous snow storm in the rockies. After that, with our bellies full—knowing we’d definitely feel it coming later, we drove off into the horizon towards home…good ol’ Wisconsin. What an epic way to end a spring break adventure.