It’s Tuesday. It’s getting harder to keep track. And the holiday enhances the haziness.

We oohed and aahed at Mesa verde yesterday. That was peanuts compared to today. Our hotel in Moab was 6 minutes from Arches National Park. We even got moving a little earlier, with the intent to get to tonight’s hotel in daylight. There is a certain pleasure in looking out the window in the morning to find you’re surrounded by mountains you couldn’t see last night. We didn’t make it tonight, however. We arrived at Ruby’s Inn (really it is Ruby City, it is so big) about a half hour into darkness.

The landscape since Fredericksburg has been otherworldly to me, coming from humid lands covered with trees. The bones of mountains and hills are not generally visible, the way they are here, being covered with plants and humus and rotting trees and grasses. Not to mention that eastern mountains and hills are much smaller. As you may know, we traveled basically straight north after Marfa, to Santa Fe. The land went from light shades of blond and brown, to orange red. In Mesa Verde it was tan and pink, covered with yucca and scrub oak, making it ‘verde’. The lack of water is abundantly clear, with seeing water in a creek bed a surprising occurrence. The trees are stunted or twisted, the sagebrush on the way to becoming tumbleweeds. Northern Texas, sandy, grayish white, and somewhat flat, rose to the Guadeloupe Mountains, our first National Park. It is mostly a hiking park, where you get out of your car and traipse around, carrying water bottles, and seeing awesome views. We aren’t into that.

So we bought our parks pass and some postcards and headed on to Carlsbad Caverns. Kinda the opposite of Guadeloupe, since instead of going out and about, we went in and beneath. Mom wrote about that a couple days ago.

North of Carlsbad became flatter, like farmland, but with a lot of oil production and the acrid smell that goes with it. The smell diminished, and all of a sudden you would see orchards of large trees. Big blocks of them, evenly spaced and well watered. I think they were pistachio, but I’m not sure. And sometimes there were the bright green fields of alfalfa. The things people plant in the desert mystifies me.

Roswell had a deluge a few weeks ago, and the land was darker, as though moist, and there were pools of standing water at times. The map program took us around a washed out road. I couldn’t tell how much damage had occurred since the roads we took were fine, and the dwellings few and far between. Once in a while I saw an overturned truck, or a pile of debris, but that might have been a normal yard clean-up for someone who had waited awhile to tackle a big job. I did see ‘Roswell Strong’ signs and notices for donations. Neither a good sign.

North of Santa Fe we were excited to start to see the mountains emerge from the ground. Some were pink, some beige, some orangey red.

By the time we reached Farmington (it was dark, with still an hour to go in our trip), the mountains were a constant presence. Luckily we plan to return to this area after the Grand Canyon, so we can see the Four Corners and Shiprock.

The sky is a big presence out here. Even when there are mountains, the sky is somehow bigger than in the East. Mostly we have had blue skies, which is a blue that expands and you feel as though you could almost jump into space. Maybe it’s the fact that we are 7,000 feet above sea level. But clouds are very dramatic, too, and you can see them sweeping across the land, dropping rain or threatening to.

Or they are a counterpoint to the heavy dark rocks, in their light, white puffiness.

Yesterday we left the casino at Cortez, and wound our way through Mesa Verde. It was incredible. The land to either side of the road would open into a canyon, and sometimes you could see that people had built small cities in large niches in the sidewalls of the canyon. I wished we could go in among the buildings, but of course that would ruin them, for no one to enjoy in the future. Sometimes it was just a large tree and brush filled canyon that seemed to go on for miles.

Today, in Arches, the drama started right away. Once you leave the visitors center, the road takes you up and around a few hairpin turns. We were oohing and aahing from the first turn.

The first parking turnout was for ‘Park Avenue’, which was named perfectly, for the red slabs marched in line as though on an avenue, and were blocky apartment building shaped monoliths.

next was ‘Courthouse Towers’, also aptly named. We went past the petrified dunes

to the balanced rock,

saw the pothole arch, and then the Garden of Eden. Yes, it is in Utah! I climbed up to one of the Windows,

where crossing the sill takes you down into a wide valley. I saw people down there, I did not go there. Then we made our way to the Delicate Arch, which required a hike to get to, so I took photos from afar.

then the road dropped in elevation as we made ou way to sand dune arch. The tall upright slabs standing in line next to each other were impressive, and when I tried to go see the Sand Dune arch, I found a slot canyon with a sandy floor.

I couldn’t see the arch after walking in a ways, so gave up in the interest of saving a bit of time. Remember we want to get to the next hotel before dark. Next was the Skyline arch, then the Devils Garden. Of course the Devils Garden is not so far from the Garden of Eden.

We had to go out the way we came, so, sadly, we had to look at all of that again. Poor us.

We left the park to find more wonders on our route towards Ruby’s Inn.

The road to route 70 was festooned with impressive red rock towers and mounds. When we got to 70, the wonders continued.

Even when we turned on to Rte 89, the scenery was still impressive.

We didnt find too many people on the road, but when we got to Ruby’s, they were all there!