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After a good day's worth of driving, we found ourselves on top of some dark, twist-riddled mountain in Boulder, Colorado. We decided it was as good a place as any to spend the night, and when light broke the next morning, flooding the car with inescapable beams of heat, we woke and began our descent. Halfway down the unfamiliar coil of steep and winding one-and-a-half-lane road, a simple matter of downshifting almost put the quickest of ends to our trip. Suddenly, we were four passengers in a soapbox derby car whose lever brake had snapped. We'd slipped gears and the cogs were not falling back into place. We were gaining velocity and barrelling around sharp curves at about thirty-five. Vision failed; trees melted into sheets of green, licking by the corners of my eyes. Say what you will about guts and fortitude; I was genuinely afraid we were all going to die.

The emergency brake brought the purple monster, and all notions of deadly, careening fireballs, to a lurching halt. Four deep, simultaneous exhalations later, a quick peep under the hood and we were back on the road, through Denver, to Arches National Park.

Over the course of the next two days, squatting—like the hobos we at that point realized we were—in a campsite reserved for some family or another and being our generally hooligan-ish selves, we explored the beaten and not so beaten paths, at one point even wedging ourselves up the crack in a rock behind our pilfered campsite. We hung out up top, some fifty to sixty feet above the ground, echoing naughty words off nearby walls and ridges. When we decided it was time to go, I, being the overambitious trailblazer I am, decided to find a quicker route back to flat land and prevailed only in almost breaking any number of bones in my body. "Hey! Check it out! We can just go down this way!" I crabwalked over to where it appeared a simple three to five foot drop would get us down quite efficiently. I was greeted instead with a steep face of slickrock about twenty to thirty feet above the bottom of a gaping crevasse. Dangling from a sharp hold by the fingertips, I uttered the first words that came to mind: "Uh... guys?" "Yeah?" "I don't think we're going to get down this way." "Oh? Well, come back up and we'll—" "Uh... yeah... see... I'm not sure I can..." Then, a pause. "Yeah. I think I'm stuck." God, I'm an idiot.

Thankfully, in Boulder, we'd stopped at an REI for some essentials, among them a length of cord that I don't think we ended up using for anything but hauling my dumb ass back up that confounded rock. In the twenty to thirty-some minutes it took for us to figure it all out, I had little else to think of but "Shit! There is no way I'm going to live this one down." Charlie even had a chance to snap a picture, before kindly casting me the line and yanking me back like some kind of dirty, hairy fish.

In Moab, Chas-Bob and I stopped at the grocery store while Andrew and Karly hung out, getting the brakes checked (They were fine, though not for much longer.) Charlie apparently thought he was some kind of wonderful money saver and picked us up ten hot dogs, for something like eighty cents, marked "For Maximum Value." We ate them that evening at Capitol Reef. Ladies and gentlemen, these were not hot dogs. They looked like hot dogs and they felt like hot dogs; hell, they even smelled like hot dogs, but, Dear God save us now, these were not hot dogs. I imagine these to be the hot dogs they serve on Thursdays in Hell. And that was Capitol Reef.

Bryce Canyon was too cold and covered in snow for us to do a damn thing except climb to the top of Inspiration Point and slide down on our asses, which pretty much made not stopping at the gate and continuing through to Zion worth it. Besides, route twelve, which carves its way through the Grand Staircase-Escalante and Glen Canyon, was worth it on its own merit. I have scarcely enjoyed riding in a car more in my life than over those 120 miles through canyons and over spiny, razor-thin hogbacks.

But, since our plans for Bryce were shot, we headed out to Zion, almost a whole week early. The exorbitant price of camping there led us to a plot of government land, just down the road. There, we met Pat and Jerry, who regaled us with their stories of life on the road. In the park, it was the same: more beautiful vistas and invigorating hikes. It is exceedingly difficult to describe the things we saw; I'm not even going to try. When my pictures return from whatever off-site developing lab to which they've scampered off, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

St. George held for us a pair of nights in a cheap motel, some delicious Mexican food, and an endless parade of massive Mormon families. This is a town with overpopulation—and traffic—problems. We lazed around for an evening, watching O Brother on TNT, and by the end of our stay at the Motel 6, had all succumbed to cabin fever—It's amazing what the great outdoors does to a person—and were ready to get out of there.

And then there was Vegas. Please don't make me talk about Vegas. I now know exactly what the late Hunter Thompson was so afraid and loathsome of. The place oozes bad vibes and paranoia. A city this morally decrepit is no place for anyone on Easter (We tried to park at the church. It didn't work.), though I did get a gander of Pete Rose, the would-be hall of famer, signing autographs for fifty bucks a pop outside one of the lesser-known casinos on the strip, somewhere between the Flamingo and the Tropicana. We meandered down to the Venetian, which was pretty neat, though I hate to admit any sort of groove for a place like Vegas. What I enjoyed most about the town was circling the return-to-terminal ramp at McCarron while Charlie and Karly searched for Neha, the fifth in our party. I'd made it through a good portion of the Jack Johnson album before they appeared, and had, by then, gotten into a pretty good routine. I'm fairly sure I now know that part of Vegas better than about 99.9% of the country. They hopped into the back of the great whale and we took off: "We need to go. One more hour in this town and I'll kill somebody." Sorry Neha, but a town this grossly atavistic is no place for us.

We camped at Quail Creek, between two of our prior destinations, and baked a cake in a makeshift convection oven to celebrate Karly's birthday. The next day's sun brought us back to Zion. We donned our packs and hiked up the Coalpits Wash, a lengthy bit of terrain that follows a beautifully clear, babbling brook all the way up into the thick of the park. It was astonishingly perfect. Three days and nights in the backcountry, and we all felt like we were on vacation, which was funny, because we already were on vacation.

Our return trip took us through Four Corners, which, we found out, is still the only place in the country where four states intersect, even when its closed. Mesa Verde, ostensibly one of the parts of the trip to which I was most looking forward, turned out to be kind of a letdown. Many of the parks we visited were only partially open, limiting our options for views and hikes, but we made the most of it, and kept surprisingly warm and dry, despite the fact that it rained, or snowed, or hailed for some period of time just about every day.

Anyway... about those brakes: Nearing the end of our trip, only two states away, somewhere outside Topeka at five ay-em, the brake line and the carcass of a deer succeeded in splitting each other in half. I awoke to the sound of Andrew, shouting in panic: "Oh shit!" Then, a moment later, before I'd even rubbed my eyes awake, a terrible thud, and the swerving of tires to the side of the road. "We hit something." "No shit." We made our way through a list of body shops, finally arriving in Topeka and finding a Midas around ten, killing some time in the McDonald's while an estimate was approximated. We left at noon.

And that was it. And now we're back. And we all wish we were still on the road.