Road Trip, Part Four - Home Again

On Friday morning we packed up the tent and headed off - hitting the road by 7 a.m. - to Arches National Park, where we planned to have lunch and spend a few hours (not nearly what Arches merits, but better than skipping it). Another beautiful drive with a sleepy kid, and we were soon in the crazy gorgeous canyonlands region. When we got to Moab, it was blistering hot, but we had our water bottles, and we walked to a few of the arches where it was fine in the shade.

The arches are amazing - beautiful graceful curves of sandstone, arcing up against the rich blue sky. Everywhere you look you see more of them, and windows, and spires, and monoliths, and a multitide of other crazy shapes. It's a great place to let the imagination run wild: "I see a train! No, it's a camel! No, it's a camel-train..."

But two hours passed too quickly, and we had a loooooong way to go. The drive continues to be incredible, passing near (but missing) Capitol Reef on Highway 70, and on westward to Nevada. We were planning to camp at Great Basin National Park that night, expecting to get there around 5 or 6 p.m. I was aiming for Highway 50 for the ride home - the "Loneliest Highway in America" - it's a drive I really love, as you pass through the basin & range landscape - long straight stretches of sagebrush desert, then sudden quick mountain ranges, then another long straight stretch, and so on, for mile after mile after mile. It's usually a hot, dusty drive that really brings home the desolation of Nevada, but we got lucky.

When we got to Great Basin, we discovered to our surprise that it was full - apparently it was Pioneer Days and everyone in Utah had a holiday. But it was also raining, fairly heavily - dark thunderstorms overhead, big drops falling. Carson and I decided to just keep driving and see where we got. (He was getting pretty ready for home again.) So on we went. We stopped for a quick dinner in Ely, and kept driving. I think we got that drive on the most beautiful day - the thunderstorms kept the air clean, the desert was green, the mountains spectacular, and as it got later we saw the most amazing sunset - to our west were clouds of pure gold, to the east were salmon-colored mountains with lavendar clouds and a huge rainbow. We tried to stop and get a photo, but my camera was clearly not up to the task! We slept that night in a motel in Fallon, Nevada, and the next morning it was up to Tahoe and back down the other side to home, tired but happy.