It actually wasn't all that hot in the early morning - but there was the promise of heat to come, and by the time we headed north out of Monument Valley - leaving the red rocks and soft sand behind us it was over 90 degrees (or 32 Celsius - but 90 sounds hotter).
We travelled though the town of Mexican Hat, visited the amazing goose-necks state park (where the San Juan river meanders through some very soft rock and leaves an amazingly twisted trail) and then north onto a road that I'd been thinking about since we started planning the trip. The Moki Dugway wonders some 600 vertical meters right up the side of a cliff, even as we drove towards it I could not see any route up - it looked like the rock just swallowed the road like a Nargun from the dreamtime... but the road was there - and up it wound its 1100 feet of fun to the top.
We dawdled through the national bridges monument before making our stop at the dusty and interesting town of Moab - build on the dollars that uranium mining brought... and very close to one of the most visually stunning places I've been, Arches National Park.
From here on we entered what I call "Breakdown land"... winding blacktop cutting through thin red soil, stone clad gullys and abandoned farms... this is the place where one of my favourite thrillers Breakdown was filmed (watch it - its a cracker). Thankfully the locals are not as unfriendly as in the movie.
The locals live in and around the rock ringed town of Moab, built with dollars that Uranium mining brought, and living now off the thousands of tourists who come each day to visit the Arches National Park...
And whoo boy - I can see why they come in their thousands. Its amazing, from the moment you enter you're confronted with twisted landscapes of rock in all its hues... this isn't like monument valley, this is not just on the grans scale - but every scale, small boulders teeter on top of needle like plinths of rock, enormous spans of ribbon like rock reach across impossible distances to form graceful arches, and the sense of time, time passing, time past, weighs heavily.
We explored in depth, the girls again playing in the fine sand and having a ball (and getting filthy - but hey - its only sand) we walked through thin shaded gouges in the rock, the air cool in the shadows and looked out from our haven upon the endless expanse of sand, rock and hazy distance that stretched out from our oasis of shade.
Lib and I took turn to walk in the heat while the girls played in the car and then, as the sun began to sink we walked out again into the desert air and across the grassy plains to watch the sunset from "the windows", high up on the mesa that makes up the park. We followed a jackrabbit and the girls played in the sand again.
We sat in silence as the sun turned blood red, fringing the distant and low clouds in gold. The girls made wishes under the "magic wishing arch" that they in their wonderful imagination had found (Lucy a little sad as her chocolate chip cookie didn't instantly appear)...and as darkness fell and stars began to appear we listened to the cooling land and the distant cry of some lonesome desert bird.
