DRIVING USA: CANYONS GALORE

Thursday – yes, I had to check as have already forgotten what day it is and the date! We left Ely, Nevada really early finding that dawn was very much awake at 5 a.m. – we’re right on the border for the time zone change, so I guess it was working on mountain time sort of. Anyway… on we go… but oops we took the wrong turn and went about 12 miles before Madame B..ch got her knickers in a knot and kept telling us to turn around and we finally realized we’d boo-booed.

The early part of our journey today was really more of the long long straights and winding through hills, but then everything changed. Oh boy, you think that the US has the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon etc, but this sort of landscape is all the way through this part of Utah. We’d go from one canyon and towering landscape of dry stone mountains rising from the earth, worn away through thousands of years, and then come another and another. We stopped at several viewing areas. Actually this is something quite interesting we’ve noted, that there are virtually no picnic areas here at all. I think in 3 days driving we’ve seen 3 in total. In NZ of course they’re everywhere and we couldn’t figure out for a while why there were none here – then we realized that in likelihood the US citizens don’t do picnics, but go to drive ins/take outs etc. Maybe we’re wrong, but it’s the only reason we could come up with.

Flat...but boy does that change

Weird stone formations

The depth isn't clear, but it's way down

These are ginormous - baby rock

Mama Rock

Daddy Rock

Anyway, we stopped at 2 viewing areas today, the second time as we’d come around a corner, to face one huge mountain edifice only to go a few hundred feet further to face 2 more, each bigger than the other.

We’ve gone through a few small towns today, but really they are quite sad and dying. We’ve stopped at Green River. Motels, restaurants, diners are closed, it’s very sad, however the motel we’re staying at is quite busy as at the local museum tonight it is hosting college students from around the world (we’re hearing all sorts of languages) as they are here to let off some sort of homemade rockets!

Neil’s highlight today was seeing canyons galore; the structure of them is amazing.

One place – which we think from the map is called Silver Lake – well when we saw it in the distance, I was quite excited to see some water at long last – then we got up close – it was completely empty but shimmered as if it had water! Quite strange.