Driving out of Utah back into Arizona and then slightly back up into Utah on a road that was at times deserted and at times piled up with 7 cars in a rows staggered behind a slow trailer-truck, thats how we got here. But i’ll go more in depth with all these and the teeth clattering experience that was driving around the 17 mile dirt road loop in another post (the one i’ve been leaving till last because it’s the one that actually requires me to sit down and really dig deep with all the travel notes and tips, the one that requires me to surround myself with maps and receipts, and i’ll get there I promise) .

This post is just my ode of sorts to the way the red earth felt so alive everywhere you looked, like you could taste it behind your teeth if you stared out at the expanses for long enough. This post is about the feeling of wanting to yell out into the wind whipping across the flat lands and around the giant sandstone buttes rising hundreds of feet up into the swirling blue sky, but how I didn’t because being respectful of land that is not our own is a rather important part of visiting here.

I can honestly say being here was exactly what I had anticipated it would be like when I got it into my head head I needed to visit, though a big part of me kept asking myself “is this truly real?”   in a sort of hushed whisper because it was so hard for my brain to really comprehend that something so vast and majestic like this area actually existed outside of movie scenes, that the land stretching out-out-out and rising up in buttes and spires and mesas was not some CGI fevered dream.And I really do think that I could watch the light and skies change here for days and still not get the photo that would really do the monuments justice.

~m