October 4, Monday
After we left Moab we headed towards the Grand Canyon.
We headed south along the La Sal mountains on hwy 191. It was in the mid 80's and sunny!
The weather quickly changed, the sky darkened, lightening was everywhere, then HUGE raindrops, and the temperature dropped to 47 chilly degrees!
This is not what a sunny day on the road should look like, eh?
We were able to see Wilson's arch through the rain drops. Pretty cool.
After the short rain storm cleared up we continued on our merry way and ran into a DUST storm!
You can see the dust at the end of the road around the power poles.
Never saw a dust storm in real life, just in the movies.
It was pretty impressive, glad we didn't have to drive through it.
David was paying close attention to the road and was able to ward off any problems with the dust!
The weather was back to sun in a short time and we continued on towards the canyon.
We drove through the Valley of the Gods. I am so a girl of the Midwest, I feel like I am driving through a John Wayne western out here. I am just amazed at all the color and rock formations beside the road and out in the fields.....where the deer and the buffalo roam!
The color bands, the etching of the stone, the boulders that fall off on occasion, wow!
A little ways down the road we saw a sign that said - Mexican Hat Rock - so of course we had to check it out. From the road it looked pretty cool, I am amazed at the large rocks that look like a stiff wind would blow them off their perch. This was back from the road, down a washboard of a two-track, so David should of been driving slowly so we would stay in the road.....but this is David we're talking about here! He says he was driving fine. We did get a great clear picture of the rock formation. See -
From the road you can see the river running in the valley behind it, of course he wanted to go over the hill and see that too.
The river is in the left 1/3 of the next picture, the rock formation is above and to the left of the white car.
Once we passed the Mexican Hat formation, on its washboard road, and snaked our way around back, UP and then DOWN the little hill in the road.....I swear I can still see the fingerprints in the dash.... you could see the river lazily flowing down the valley. We have no picture of it because I was holding onto the dash in the hopes that the truck wouldn't slide down into the river/rocks below and we would DIE!! While quietly and nicely requesting my darling husband to GO BACK NOW!
He was unable to take a picture due to his maniacal laughing, all the while stating that there was no problem and he would turn the truck around a little further down the "road" and take us back to safety, and really now...what was I worried about?
I am unsure which was tighter closed at this point sphincter or eyes!!!
Did I mention that I have a little issue with heights?
Further down the road was a beautiful bridge over the San Juan River
The white things at the bottom of this picture are homes!
Some of the pictures are blurry at the bottom due to me taking them out of the window while we are driving.
We pulled over on the side of the road to just stop and listen. There were no cars coming, it was getting ready to rain, you could smell it in the air. There was a little bit of a breeze. There were no sounds, all was quiet, no traffic, no people talking, no phones, no dogs barking, no birds....just quiet.
After a little break from the world.......we continued on into Arizona and stopped for the night at a new hotel in Tuba City. It started to rain after we got inside and the lightening show was spectacular!
I think I can feel the circulation coming back into my hands now.
Tomorrow, Grand Canyon.
No comments:
Post a Comment