Yesterday (Wednesday) was our first full day of exploration, and probably the best day of the trip so far. It was a day-long feast of spectacular scenery, preceded by a tasty appetizer on Tuesday, when we drove from Grand Junction to Moab (Utah) after dialysis. I’ve been to Moab many times but have seldom approached it from the east, and had never taken State Highway 128 before. I guess the only reason I missed it before was to make it such an unexpected joy this time. The locals call it “the river road” because it skirts the Colorado River, a 45-mile drive from I-70 to Moab that winds around and through red-rock canyons that are a stirring prelude to the rest of southern Utah. After several miles of this scenery, we were pulled over to take photos when a van stopped alongside us. A woman wondered what part of New York we were from; she and her husband were originally from Syracuse (90 miles from where we live) but have moved to a tiny town in one of the side-canyons off Rt. 128. “The view is even better once you pass those rocks,” she said, and she wasn’t kidding. Once we passed the Fisher Towers area the view got better and better until the road and river were merely narrow wedges in between towering orange cliffs. I had wanted to go out to Dead Horse Point for the sunset because it had been highly recommended by a friend who ought to know, but we stopped so often on 128 that the last light had already passed by the time we reached Moab.
We didn’t get to Arches National Park until 11am yesterday, and didn’t leave until nearly 5pm. The first time I visited Arches was 1970, a year before it was converted from a National Monument to a National Park. First established in 1929, it was doubled in acreage from roughly 36,000 to 70,000 acres by President Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and soon after was made a park. That brought more protection and more development, enough to appall Edward Abbey if he were still alive, as he spent two summers as a park ranger there in the late 1950s, camping in a government trailer near Balanced Rock, which is still the most popular attraction in the park. It was a warm day, around 80 degrees, but fortunately the 50% chance of thunderstorms never materialized. We hit every stop, every side road, and every viewpoint, and it was all magnificent, with so many improbable rock formations that were the work of about 200 million years of water and wind erosion. After awhile, everywhere you look you see faces in the rocks, or animals (Ex., the famed “double arch” looked to us like two long-beaked birds fighting over a worm), and sections of the park have names like “Fiery Furnace,” “Devil’s Garden,” and the “Garden of Eden.” The last spot is where we stopped for over an hour, enjoying a cool breeze through the car windows as I read a couple of chapters of The Monkey Wrench Gang to Linda. Later, we found a very comfortable patch of shade under a tree near the Devil’s Garden and read another chapter. At Fiery Furnace we talked with a park ranger who, like Abbey, was a philosophy major in college who fell in love with the southwest and is building a makeshift home in order to stay around Moab a long time. That sounded like a great idea to us.
After a quick late-afternoon jaunt back into town for a bite to eat, we made the 40-minute drive out to Dead Horse Point for the sunset. It more than lived up to its billing, with an endless valley of red, orange, beige, and (as the light faded) purple and a meandering section of the Colorado River below. We were enthralled by the views and spent an hour out there before the light went away. However, we were also horrified to see plenty of evidence that Abbey’s worst fears are being realized—that this pristine and uninhabitable desert is nevertheless being desecrated by the forces of “progress” who value exploiting natural resources over preserving them. The endless power lines along Hwy 191 (the main north-south road that goes through Moab and heads south into Monument Valley) were bad enough. The oil wells along the side-road of Hwy 313, marked only with a sign reading “pioneer drilling” but operating under massive wattage of artificial light after the sun set, while ominous-looking oil tankers snaked their way through the desert, were distressing, though not as much as an evil mining operation, authorized by the federal government, right along Hwy 191. Most disturbing of all are the two potash evaporation ponds visible from Dead Horse Point. Operated by a company called Intrepid Potash, which boasts that it supplies nearly 10% of the US demand for potassium-related products, the terraced evaporation ponds process water to extract potash (potassium chloride), and the fact that they are part of the same panorama as the much-abused Colorado River makes it all the more monstrous. It’s bad enough that the industrial world feel compelled to rip up the earth; do they have to do it in the shadow of one of the most magnificent natural wonders in this country?
On a lighter note, we did have our funniest experience of the trip that morning in Moab. After Linda savored her Eggs Benedict so much, she lingered over her coffee while I went to pay the bill. As I waited, a couple came along, with the man standing next to me and his wife going over by the door. The cashier, Akif, appeared and asked me if I enjoyed the meal. “Very much,” I said. “My wife really liked the Eggs Benedict.” He turned to the woman by the door and said, “I’m glad you enjoyed your breakfast.” “I did,” she replied, pausing ever so briefly, “but I’m not with him.” A chagrined Akif grew red-faced as he apologized for the mistake, while the woman moved over to stand next to her husband. “Of course,” she mused, “this is Utah, after all.” That cracked all of us up, and she hurried out the door, still laughing. Her husband turned to me and said, “I can’t take her anywhere.” Well, the truth is that he can and should take her everywhere. They’re like we are; Linda and I make our own fun and laugh at everything (except potash, I guess), and we’ll enjoy every place to which we travel. As we’re doing on this trip.
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