Day Five - Utah

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We're heading for canyons.  We've been completely overwhelmed... the beauty in this part of the country is startling.  And it changes with every turn.  After a few hours, the mountains themselves change from the brown and green of lush and dense ranges, to the red of desert ranges.  We stop a lot, just to look, and see, and take it all in.  The vastness of it, the feeling of being so small in the middle of so much beauty.  It's amazing.  We stop and we climb, and we run, and we explore (all three of us... Ilan, me, and the dog).  I feel reborn, reconnected.  I lost the signal to my cell a few hours ago, and for the next couple days I'm pretty much off the map with it, but I really don't care.  Out here with my boy and  our dog, I remember what's important.  I feel alive and present.  I want to remember this forever.

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A full day of driving through the mountains, and we come into Glenwood Canyons.  We're driving through them, and the canyon walls rise menacingly above us for miles.  This route takes us along the Colorado River, and we'd be riding along with it into the next day.

We cross over into Utah, and now we're seeing mesas, and the red rock formations that exemplify the state.  We're in the desert, without a doubt.  Partly because I have a strong desire to visit Arches National Park, and partly because we're just feeling really adventurous, we get off the highway and take 128, a smaller desert road, in the direction of Cisco. I'm honestly thinking that Cisco is a small town where we can get a bite to eat and maybe hole up for the night.  Cisco is a ghost town.  Not a tourist-y ghost town, but a real one.  We drive through, and every building looks as if it's been hit by a tornado.  We begin to try to scare each other with stories of our imagined fate if we stop, or even slow down here, and by the time we hit the Cisco city limits, we're scared and laughing and hightailing back into the nothingness of the desert as fast as we can.

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We really are in the middle of nothing.  Desert and rocks for miles and miles.  We've passed one car.  Thankfully, as the sun is going down, we come into Riverlands National Park.  Surrounded by colossal rock formations, and nestled next to the Colorado River, we find a place to park and "camp" for the night.  After the sun goes down, it begins to thunderstorm. It is very dark and a little frightening, and we are way outside of our comfort zone (all of us... my dog is having an anxiety attack), but it's wonderful.