Dylan and Kelly- OUT

Libby met Kelly and I in town for a last Dairy King meal. We spent hours doin' the errands-thing and settled in the library for enough time to do emails and music, and for me to answer a phone-interview for the umpteenth job that Ive applied for. I sat in the truck for the phone-call; it hailed and sleeted and winded.
He hired me on the spot; I will operate a ski-lift for the winter season at Mammoth Mountain!

It was the perfect start to our roadtrip! (for me, anyways)...
...South on 34 and blue skies. We stopped in Empire to drop Bob's books off at the Sweet Shop. I ran up to an old gold mine, too; Kelly made an awesome quick sketch of the scene while I picked a handful of Pyrite crystals from the tailings. We drove through the long Eisenhower tunnel on I-70 and caught a stunning sunset many miles east of Grand Junction. Kelly asked me why the city was named Grand Junction. I couldn't answer and she decided to start a list of questions that we had about the things we encountered on the trip.

Why did the sunset appear to last so long?

Why is the city called Grand Junction?

We decided that the sunset had lasted much longer than usual; Kelly theorized that we'd been acclimated to sunset from deep in a mountain gulch and that the mountains had shortened sunset.I explored the possibilities of chasing the sun west. I guess that if earth rotates at 1040 mph, and we traveled at 70mph, it would add something like 9 minutes to the sunset (my math is probably very wrong!). I'm bettin' that Kelly's idea is much more likely! Grand Junction, like the more familiar Junction City KS, is named for the junction of the region's two major rivers: the Colorado River and the Gunnison. Grand Junction is also known as THE RIVER CITY in Colorado. "Grand" is a reference to the Grand River until it was re-named as the upper stretch of the Colorado in '21.... Wikipedia is awesome!
We didn't turn from I-70 until eleven or twelve; ran down Cisco's blue Highway- towards Arches National Park- until I spotted a steep dirt road on the left.

The truck's wheels spun over the loose gravel for a quarter-mile or so; the tent put up on the windless-side of the truck and we camped in small gravel pit. 'Sat in the light of a nearly-full moon, told stories of all of the creepiest critters we'd encountered and watched the cloud's moon-shadows pass over a vast desertscape.

From our tiny 'stealth-camp' sunrise was colourful and exciting. Blues and Oranges, but not much topography. The moon had revealed the flatness of our surroundings overnight, but the vastness of the plain was unexpected to me. Kelly crawled from the tent after the most exciting colours had grown dull.
The tiny camp-stove helped make some fine powered cappuccino-stuff. We each had a couple of glasses of coffee crap and i collected some fine agates before we hopped back onto the unnamed hwy to Cisco.

Im not real sure if the tiny desert town had any habitable buildings, but we spotted a sign that gave the town the nickname Hydrocarbon Heaven and Kelly added the mystery to our list.
Why is Cisco the Hydrocarbon heaven?
... We still dont know.The general store was gutted, stripped and leaning to the right, and a huge train yard sat to the north. Cisco actually hosts a great sheep and wool industry. South of the 'town' we entered a Colorado River-canyon and followed the river for many miles-


Pulled into Arches' Visitor Centre for quick break and some info. I asked a ranger-dude about the best hikes in the park and he gave us a list of short ones. The line of cars exiting the park was forever.


We slipped onto the double arches with a Japanese Couple and a German family in between tour buses. They were massive! Kelly immediately noticed the softness of the sand that we walked on- she compared it to shuffleboard sand. I was fascinated by all of the cacti and yuccas around us- all of the cool orange sandstone, too! My pics were disappointing.


The drive to Delicate Arch- the famous guy on the UTAH licence plate- took us maybe an hour for all of our short stops and hikes. The parking lot (and overflow) for the trail was packed. We went around once and slipped into the spot of a departing Illinois minivan. I was surprised to find a creek on the trail- and an exciting wall of recent petroglyphs marked by a trail sign. They'd been carved between 1600 and 1800-


The trail led over a long, steep slope of exposed sandstone. Short cairns and a barley-visible trail marked our way. The most traveled paths up the sandstone were slightly darker than the orange slope. The trail led us into a dry, sandy desert-type place dominated by huge, unearthly sandstone sculptures. The rolling, rounded structures projected directly from the bedrock and looked like something between the badlands and the loess hills. I wish I could describe them! Thy were of horizontal, waving layers and honeycombed with small pits and caves- Kelly said they belonged on mars, and later placed them to a StarTrek spaceship- ya, she's a dork!
The arch was crawling with people. People on the arch and under it and swarming the edges and trails around it. I spent some time simply waiting for a people-free shot of the arch. Families and friends took turns posing between the legs of the thing- Kelly basked in the sun for a while and spent about the same insane number of photos on her own camera. I hope hers came out better than mine!


We found a crazy dotted-grey line on the park map and hung a left from the main road. The dirt and gravel lasted for many miles- it looked like it MIGHT drop us off near 191 or the interstate, but we began to doubt it after about 20 miles. Kelly spotted a 'sparkly' hill side and we walked a ways to explore. It was a magnificent Selenite deposit!
The crystals were brilliant and clear- some were more than 4 or5 inches in length! I gathered a handful of the soft crystals in an empty littered cigarette pack and a small number of beautiful crystals for micromounts.
Kelly appeared to be as excited about the rocks as I was- impossible, right?- She gathered crystals and asked me all sorts of questions about them that I couldn't answer. My favorite was a 3-inch piece shaped like the leaf of a fern.. It was gorgeous in the dark dirt and I took a photo to share. The thing is very thin; I wrapped it tight in some toilet paper and stashed it where it may make it home.

We spotted the hwy on the other side of a valley and decided we weren't too far. ..The red dirt road led us to maybe a half-mile from our destination and T'd To force us right or left. I hung a right and another left and another right- slowly we made it closer to the highway. Im sure Kelly was thinking that we were very lost at the point where the road took a strait-shot for the hills again- we were- but I kept towards the hills and we popped onto I-70 near exit 182 or somethin- on the backside of a ratty gas station. We filled up on 70- a few miles after the sign that read next services 110 miles- and Kelly drove for a while. It was way-weird being a passenger... We rode through Hanksville, on our way to Zion National Park, and pulled off to check out another coll selenite-hill. Lots of awesome oyster fossils, too! I held one of the Hanksville fossils to the sun for a pic.