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bloodyrosemccoyUnlike the previous place, I have definitely been here before. You may have heard a few things about the strange scenery of Southern Utah—aside from its being the location for filming EVERY WESTERN EVER, it also tends to get typecast as The Distant Planet Zargon, or Mars, or that one planet with the killer Teletubbies from Galaxy Quest, or Spaceman Spiff's haunt, etc. And there’s a reason: Southern Utah is weird enough to look like another planet.
It’s something that I can’t really convey with pictures, but I’m trying here anyway. But I highly recommend that if you’re ever in the area, join me on a trip to Moab. Liz did, and she didn’t regret it at all:
It really is red rock!
I was terribly stupid and forgot to take pictures of the actual town of Moab, which has the sort of Main Street you always find in a tourist town: restaurants, hotels, and souvenir shops. But there are a few places I want to tell you about:
-The Slick Rock Café, which over the years has had its ups and downs in food and service. Highlights include killer nachos, that one time our waitress was COMPLETELY PLOWED, and their current amazing dessert: a deep dish cookie a la mode, which really winds up being half-baked cookie dough. It is DELICIOUS.
-Miguel’s Baja Grill, which sells excellent tacos and fried ice cream. It’s actually positioned in a brightly painted alley. The proprietor knows my family, but he didn’t really recognize me outside of that context. Which is fair enough; he was still a pretty pleasant guy.
-Back of Beyond Books, a pompous shop that sells all the Edward Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams you can want. Dad likes to visit this tiny store for hours on end to ponder the mysteries of the desert. I'm just glad it has now merged with the other bookstore on Main Street, which sells commercial books and, temptingly, pulp sci-fi paperbacks from the Golden Age.
-The Shop That’s Never Open. Nobody knows what the story is with this shop. For years there have been dust-filmed prisms hanging in the window and cardboard boxes piled against the door. Rumors that the place is owned by a crazy cat lady are the only leads we have. It’s become a bit of its own tourist attraction.
-Our motel, which was one of the many hotels in the area, but it was nice because it had air conditioning and wireless internet. This was good because we could spend our downtime watching Dexter on Netflix. Liz had never seen it before, which was a travesty because Liz is a huge fan of crime dramas. “You know, everyone who watches this show tells me they think of me,” she noted. “Perhaps this is a sign,” I said.
Anyway, I didn’t get pictures of those, but I did get pictures of the national park surrounding Moab: Arches!
The sediment here created layers of rock with many different densities, which is why they tend to weather so unevenly and create these weird mesas and plateaus.
Balanced Rock is a good example of this weird difference in densities, where the softer stone is worn right out from under the denser stone. Someday this big old rock will fall off its perch, and you just know it'll be all over Youtube.
Liz balances on a rock in front of Balanced Rock!
I suspect some of these trees grow in dead. They call the scrubby trees in the desert a “pygmy forest.”
Ephedra, aka Mormon Tea. A nicely oxymoronic plant, that.
Spot the arches!
Okay, you’ve heard of the famous Red Dirt of Moab. But did you know that the iron content in the sand can also turn the dirt green? You can get a whole rainbow of colors in the desert.
Another interesting thing in the desert, although you may not realize it. That crust of chunky black stuff is cryptobiotic soil, a complex micro-ecosystem that builds up like compost. It takes decades to grow even a thin crust, so you have to be careful where you step.
Sediment layers.
Weathering creates some cool formations on a less gigantic level, too.
I believe this mound contains quite a bit of gypsum, something you can’t show in photos either. Gypsum sparkles in the sunlight. It’s also the main component in desert roses.
You’ve got to hand it to lichen. Growing out of solid rock can’t be an easy life.
After a drive through the park, we stopped at the trail for Delicate Arch—the iconic arch you see all over Utah junk, from shot glasses (yes, we sell shot glasses) to license plates. “You sure you want to do this?” I asked as we slathered on sunscreen in the blazing heat.
“Absolutely!” Liz said.
“I warn you: the stretch of slick rock in the middle of this is pretty miserable.”
“I can take it!”
And so we went!
Step 1 on the hike was the Ute petroglyphs off the main trail.
Trivia time! There is a difference between pictographs and petroglyphs. Pictographs are created by painting on rock faces. Petroglyphs are created by pecking off the patina on the rock to expose the lighter rock underneath.
They have cairns on the slick rock to help you find your way. The cairns used to be stacks of, like, three little rocks piled up. Apparently that wasn’t enough.
I’m not sure if you can tell here, but aside from my black shirt I am totally sun-ready here. Sunblock, newly purchased baseball hat with an image of a rock formation that makes it look like my hat is flipping you off, and a giant pair of sunglasses over my normal glasses. Another step toward grandmotherhood.
But ye gods, that hike was nasty. I always hated it, but I always forget just how much I hate climbing up that one stretch of rock. I got so dehydrated on the way up that my fingers swelled up to Elton John status.
Fortunately for me, Liz had similar stamina. We pretty much staggered from shady patch to shady patch.
BUT BY GOD WE MADE IT. After the slick rock hill things even out, and you can look down into a canyon before rounding the corner to see …
Delicate Arch! Recognize it? It’s an iconic one. And don’t be fooled by Liz’s forced perspective, there—you can see the people who have gone around the basin to see it close up are pretty tiny next to it.*
We survived that hike and went back to the hotel for a swim and a couple more episodes of Dexter. At the pool was a guy from Kentucky who recommended that we check out the petroglyph panel that’s right on the highway, about eight feet beyond where my family has gone to.
The petroglyphs are only heralded by one small roadsign that says “Indian Writing” and this other sign hidden in the bushes. I like that the ancient glyphs themselves have lasted much better than this modern sign.
Before we went home the next day, we took a detour to Dead Horse Point State Park.
It’s a panorama!
Check out these geological layers! I guess the original wall didn’t keep tourists from plunging off the edge into the abyss? Or what?
I wish this photo had turned out better. This is the kind of view people just love to take pictures of.
Dead Horse Point has a sad story, of course—it’s a mesa with a small point at the end. Cowboys herded wild horses onto this little point, picked the ones they wanted, and left the rejects fenced on that point to die of thirst—with this view of the Colorado River. Cowboys are great people.
This formation looks like the canyon’s waving at me. I waved back just before leaving.
Hey, a nice bafrooms! Who donated these?
Anyway, with that wonderful finale, we drove back to Salt Lake for Pizza With Dad. (The rest of the family was gone—Mom and my brother were off in California.)
That was the end of Liz’s trip; she left the next morning. But I’m hoping she’ll come back soon, because it was so darn much fun this time around.
*My brother and dad have a fond, cherished memory of one time when they beheld, with great awe, a shapely German tourist arching over backward to pose next to Delicate. They bring it up every time we mention this hike.
It’s something that I can’t really convey with pictures, but I’m trying here anyway. But I highly recommend that if you’re ever in the area, join me on a trip to Moab. Liz did, and she didn’t regret it at all:
It really is red rock!
I was terribly stupid and forgot to take pictures of the actual town of Moab, which has the sort of Main Street you always find in a tourist town: restaurants, hotels, and souvenir shops. But there are a few places I want to tell you about:
-The Slick Rock Café, which over the years has had its ups and downs in food and service. Highlights include killer nachos, that one time our waitress was COMPLETELY PLOWED, and their current amazing dessert: a deep dish cookie a la mode, which really winds up being half-baked cookie dough. It is DELICIOUS.
-Miguel’s Baja Grill, which sells excellent tacos and fried ice cream. It’s actually positioned in a brightly painted alley. The proprietor knows my family, but he didn’t really recognize me outside of that context. Which is fair enough; he was still a pretty pleasant guy.
-Back of Beyond Books, a pompous shop that sells all the Edward Abbey and Terry Tempest Williams you can want. Dad likes to visit this tiny store for hours on end to ponder the mysteries of the desert. I'm just glad it has now merged with the other bookstore on Main Street, which sells commercial books and, temptingly, pulp sci-fi paperbacks from the Golden Age.
-The Shop That’s Never Open. Nobody knows what the story is with this shop. For years there have been dust-filmed prisms hanging in the window and cardboard boxes piled against the door. Rumors that the place is owned by a crazy cat lady are the only leads we have. It’s become a bit of its own tourist attraction.
-Our motel, which was one of the many hotels in the area, but it was nice because it had air conditioning and wireless internet. This was good because we could spend our downtime watching Dexter on Netflix. Liz had never seen it before, which was a travesty because Liz is a huge fan of crime dramas. “You know, everyone who watches this show tells me they think of me,” she noted. “Perhaps this is a sign,” I said.
Anyway, I didn’t get pictures of those, but I did get pictures of the national park surrounding Moab: Arches!
The sediment here created layers of rock with many different densities, which is why they tend to weather so unevenly and create these weird mesas and plateaus.
Balanced Rock is a good example of this weird difference in densities, where the softer stone is worn right out from under the denser stone. Someday this big old rock will fall off its perch, and you just know it'll be all over Youtube.
Liz balances on a rock in front of Balanced Rock!
I suspect some of these trees grow in dead. They call the scrubby trees in the desert a “pygmy forest.”
Ephedra, aka Mormon Tea. A nicely oxymoronic plant, that.
Spot the arches!
Okay, you’ve heard of the famous Red Dirt of Moab. But did you know that the iron content in the sand can also turn the dirt green? You can get a whole rainbow of colors in the desert.
Another interesting thing in the desert, although you may not realize it. That crust of chunky black stuff is cryptobiotic soil, a complex micro-ecosystem that builds up like compost. It takes decades to grow even a thin crust, so you have to be careful where you step.
Sediment layers.
Weathering creates some cool formations on a less gigantic level, too.
I believe this mound contains quite a bit of gypsum, something you can’t show in photos either. Gypsum sparkles in the sunlight. It’s also the main component in desert roses.
You’ve got to hand it to lichen. Growing out of solid rock can’t be an easy life.
After a drive through the park, we stopped at the trail for Delicate Arch—the iconic arch you see all over Utah junk, from shot glasses (yes, we sell shot glasses) to license plates. “You sure you want to do this?” I asked as we slathered on sunscreen in the blazing heat.
“Absolutely!” Liz said.
“I warn you: the stretch of slick rock in the middle of this is pretty miserable.”
“I can take it!”
And so we went!
Step 1 on the hike was the Ute petroglyphs off the main trail.
Trivia time! There is a difference between pictographs and petroglyphs. Pictographs are created by painting on rock faces. Petroglyphs are created by pecking off the patina on the rock to expose the lighter rock underneath.
They have cairns on the slick rock to help you find your way. The cairns used to be stacks of, like, three little rocks piled up. Apparently that wasn’t enough.
I’m not sure if you can tell here, but aside from my black shirt I am totally sun-ready here. Sunblock, newly purchased baseball hat with an image of a rock formation that makes it look like my hat is flipping you off, and a giant pair of sunglasses over my normal glasses. Another step toward grandmotherhood.
But ye gods, that hike was nasty. I always hated it, but I always forget just how much I hate climbing up that one stretch of rock. I got so dehydrated on the way up that my fingers swelled up to Elton John status.
Fortunately for me, Liz had similar stamina. We pretty much staggered from shady patch to shady patch.
BUT BY GOD WE MADE IT. After the slick rock hill things even out, and you can look down into a canyon before rounding the corner to see …
Delicate Arch! Recognize it? It’s an iconic one. And don’t be fooled by Liz’s forced perspective, there—you can see the people who have gone around the basin to see it close up are pretty tiny next to it.*
We survived that hike and went back to the hotel for a swim and a couple more episodes of Dexter. At the pool was a guy from Kentucky who recommended that we check out the petroglyph panel that’s right on the highway, about eight feet beyond where my family has gone to.
The petroglyphs are only heralded by one small roadsign that says “Indian Writing” and this other sign hidden in the bushes. I like that the ancient glyphs themselves have lasted much better than this modern sign.
Before we went home the next day, we took a detour to Dead Horse Point State Park.
It’s a panorama!
Check out these geological layers! I guess the original wall didn’t keep tourists from plunging off the edge into the abyss? Or what?
I wish this photo had turned out better. This is the kind of view people just love to take pictures of.
Dead Horse Point has a sad story, of course—it’s a mesa with a small point at the end. Cowboys herded wild horses onto this little point, picked the ones they wanted, and left the rejects fenced on that point to die of thirst—with this view of the Colorado River. Cowboys are great people.
This formation looks like the canyon’s waving at me. I waved back just before leaving.
Hey, a nice bafrooms! Who donated these?
Anyway, with that wonderful finale, we drove back to Salt Lake for Pizza With Dad. (The rest of the family was gone—Mom and my brother were off in California.)
That was the end of Liz’s trip; she left the next morning. But I’m hoping she’ll come back soon, because it was so darn much fun this time around.
*My brother and dad have a fond, cherished memory of one time when they beheld, with great awe, a shapely German tourist arching over backward to pose next to Delicate. They bring it up every time we mention this hike.
