We wanted to stay one more day in Williams, to rest our sore hiking muscles, but this coming weekend is free admission to all the National Parks, so there is no room and we must move on.
We decide to push on to Utah, to see the North Rim of the Canyon, Bryce and Zion. As we get closer to UT, there are grasslands, then red mesas as far as the eye can see. It's a vast change of landscape.
High voltage electric towers look like aliens in the distance and make us think we are on another planet. We often joke about being in our own video, which is not our real life, and this is one of those moments.
We pass an Anasazi and Navajo Trading Post. The vendors operate out of tiny little cabins or trailers, with solar panels as big as the side walls of the residence. We are told that most of the artesans live in Tuba City which is miles away.
There are little communities of five houses every 5 or ten miles. Seems quite an isolated way to live. Sometimes they look quite economically depressed, with ancient RV's, or even empty tractor-trailer containers to live in.
One surprise is a little Baptist church, with not a house around for miles. There are no schools. Where are the schools? There must be children in those communities.
This is the most impressive drive of the whole trip. Many of the peaks we pass look like the inside of the Grand Canyon.
There are dust-devils as big as an upturned bus, slowly swirling. I would love to photograph them, but there is not enough contrast between them and the surrounded rocks. When they cross the road, it is truly spooky, as though they are anthropomorphised and make a decision, hesitating before jumping across the highway.
We eat lunch on the road, biting the ends of celery hearts off and spreading cream cheese on with the stem of a plastic fork. We wash our celery with bottled water and a Kleenex. Feels like we are truly pioneers.
Some of the pull-offs for scenic views are poorly designed. It is very hard to see around the curves for our RV to feel safe pulling back onto the road.
The road cuts right through the middle of the Red Mountain. It is a deer migration area.
Near Kanab, UT there is a fake movie set of an old town in the West. There are storefronts with no backs. Wonder what movie was filmed here?
Most the modern residences here at the foot of the Vermillion Cliffs use Xeroscape, where their entire front yard is rock. Virtually nothing grows here that is not impossible to maintain. Some are adobe, some modular, some with all glass fronts, depending on the view.
There are coral-colored rocks embedded in the sand dunes. There are dune-buggy tracks everywhere. They are red at the bottom, grey in the middle, and yellow ochre at the top, almost appearing man-made.
We see a walking bridge over a dry river at Cameron Ranch. They have one llama, one Shetland pony and one mule.
A little Navaho girl that we encounter calls the small lizards we see "dinosaurs". Her Mom left Tuba City to do her silversmith work at her roadside stand because "there was too much chaos at home." Competing artesans are set up side by side. They ignore each other.
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