DAY 10 – Tuesday, March 23
START: Cortez, CO
END: Page, AZ
MILEAGE: 428 miles

HIGHLIGHTS: Four Corners, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon

We were on the road by nine o’clock this morning and headed south out of Cortez along Route 491.  Until recently, this road was part of U.S. Highway 666, which ran from Monticello, Utah, to Douglas, Arizona at the Mexican border.  Sharing its moniker with the notorious “mark of the beast” from the book of Revelation, Highway 666 had earned itself the nickname, “The Devil’s Highway”.  The curse associated with its number has been blamed for higher-than-average accidents, many of them fatal, along its six hundred-plus miles.  The religious and superstitious alike once considered the high death rate to be inextricably linked the devil’s own signature on this stretch of road. 

Of course, as is often the case, reality is far less romantic than fiction, and the original numbering of The Devil’s Highway wasn’t the work of pagans or Satan worshippers.  This road was simply the sixth branch created off of old Route 66, that mother of all road trip highways.  The unseemly death rate could be more adequately blamed on the terrain that 666 passed through – treacherously winding roads through mountains, canyons and deserts – than on any lingering satanic curse.  

Over the years, more efficient highways have gradually replaced historic Route 66 and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) officially eliminated the highway in 1985.  It exists now only in memories and Nat King Cole songs, its last relics concealed somewhere beneath Interstate 40. 

With its official link to Route 66 gone, each state was now free to rename its section of 666, whether to eliminate driver unease, reduce road sign theft, or simply make the road an extension of other existing highways with less religiously significant numbers.  In 1992, Arizona changed its stretch of U.S. 666 to U.S. 191.  New Mexico, Utah and Colorado followed suit in 2003, renaming their own piece of the Devil’s Highway, U.S. 491.  Like the Mother Road, Route 666 lives on only in memories… and in really bad acid trip movies. 

Feeling secure in our own safety and salvation, we headed south on U.S. 491 toward the Four Corners.  We also made sure to pick up a Colorado shotglass before leaving Cortez.

Take a look at the states east of the Mississippi River compared with those west of it, and it’s easy to see how much of a damn hurry the United States was in to settle the western frontier.  By and large, the eastern states are small and irregularly shaped, with natural borders like rivers, lakes and oceans.  These original colonies already had booming populations before the Declaration of Independence was signed, turning them into states.  By the middle of the nineteenth century we were looking ever westward, eager to draft more states into the Union.  Unfortunately, Congress had enacted a pesky little law that required states to have a minimum population of 60,000 people in order to be recognized.  Western settlements at the time were sparse at best.  But rather than allowing themselves to be cut out of the deal by things as trifling as rivers and mountain ranges, the settlers and cartographers simply drew a bunch of straight lines, giving each state the extra needed surface area to include the minimum number of residents. 

The Four Corners Monument is undoubtedly the most touristy result of our forefathers’ arbitrary line drawing.  It is here where the borders of Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico meet, four straight lines converging on a single point, and the only place in the country where you can stand in four states at the same time.  And I guess if you own land in an area that’s as desolate and featureless as this, you’ll do anything you can to generate income.    

We’d been told by friends not to waste our time with the Four Corners because it was boring and stupid and not worth the side trip.  But like the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, the Four Corners was another one of those places that you just have to visit at least once if you plan to join the ranks of serious road trippers.  It was more or less along our route to the Grand Canyon anyway, and when else would we be this close to it again?  Plus, we reasoned, every tourist attraction is only what you make of it anyway, and we’d been making pretty good with everything we’d seen thus far.  So we ignored our friends’ advice and drove the extra five miles out of our way to spend a few minutes straddling four states.

And let me be the first to tell you we had a blast.  Yes, the Four Corners is stupid.  Yes, it is lame.  And yes it does seem ridiculous to pay three dollars per person just to come in and stand on four imaginary lines.  But by God, we got our money’s worth.  Before I continue, I should mention that the Four Corners Monument is run by the Navajo Nation, and the entrance fee goes to support them, so we really did hand over our money un-begrudgingly.  The way I saw it, if this was the only craphole patch of land the United States was willing to give to the Navajos, then they deserved to make money off it any way humanly possible. 

The focal point of the Four Corners Monument is a large open-air granite dais with a large “X” carved into it, dissecting it into four quadrants.  On each quadrant is engraved the name and seal of the state it resides in, with the state’s flag flying overhead.  At the center of the dais is a small iron disk, about the size of a CD, showing you the exact point where all four borders intersect.  Off to the side is an elevated platform, perfect for taking pictures of loved ones spread-eagled across the four states.  Lauren and I cut ourselves into quarters every way imaginable.  I stood in Utah and leaned over, sticking my head into New Mexico and my arms into Colorado and Arizona.  Lauren laid in Colorado and Utah while her belly hung over into Arizona and New Mexico.  We handed our camera off to a couple of other tourists and made an X with our bodies, putting a piece of us in each state. 

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Even though deep down I had this lingering suspicion that the disk marking the four corners was probably a couple hundred feet off the mark from where the actual cartographers had drawn their lines, we still had lot of fun.  Even at ten in the morning, there were already a couple dozen tourists of all ages there.  And every single one of them was in a good mood.  They were all courteous and patient as they waited their turn on the dais, and everybody was gracious about taking pictures for other people.  Even the interstate tourists were well behaved, the kids tame and the old women quiet. 

After taking our fill of pictures, we went over to a line of vendor stands where Native American artisans were selling handmade goods, from jewelry and clothing to pottery and dream catchers, for little more than a song.  This is a common sight in the arid desert of the American west, home to the country’s highest concentration of Indian reservations.  Indian men and women create beautiful works of art by hand, some more authentic than others, even as they wait quietly to make a sale.  In anydecently run universe, the handmade beaded hairclips and bracelets we bought should have fetched at least thirty dollars.  But since these people are forced to compete against nearby gas stations who sell mass-produced replicas for pennies, the Navajos are forced to drop the prices of their wares to near nothing and we spent no more than ten dollars on our trinkets.  I also found a Four Corners shot glass for five bucks. 

Lauren made use of the most foul-smelling outhouse imaginable and came close to retching.  Once she composed herself, we got back in the car and backtracked five miles to State Road 41, and headed into Utah.

320 million years ago, when the earth consisted of a single massive continent called Pangea, the Rocky Mountains reached as high as the current day Himalayas.  By the time the dinosaurs were the dominant species on the planet, much of these “Ancestral Rockies” had been eroded down to mere foothills.  All of that red sandstone washed west into current day Utah, New Mexico and Arizona where is was covered over with mud and more sandstone by an ebbing and flowing ocean just to the west.  By 205 million years ago, the western ocean had receded, turning the entire area into a Sahara-like desert. At the same time, eastern Utah started sinking under its own gained weight, becoming a floodplain and dumping ground for even further sediment.  While Tyrannosaurus Rex walked the earth, Utah spent most of the Cretaceous Period underwater as the Gulf of Mexico spread in from the east, depositing additional sediment in the form of shale, salt and even more sandstone. 

Right around the time the dinosaurs were exiting the stage permanently, the western United States (as it was) was undergoing tumultuous seismic activity.  The Sierra Nevada mountains rose in majesty in eastern California, while in western Utah along the Wasatch fault line, two giant landmasses tore away from each other.  The land west of the line dropped, forming the Great Basin, which represents much of current day Nevada and western Utah.  The land east of the line shot up, forming the famous Colorado Plateau, a mostly flat expanse of land sprawling between the Sierras and Rockies, representing an area as big as New Mexico.  The uplift caused the land to break and crack, opening up throughways for rivers and ushering in the latest round of erosion.  Many of the spires, towers and monoliths seen in Monument Valley and its surrounding areas were concealed beneath the ground 65 million years ago.   Wind and water washed the soft outer shale away, leaving behind the harder, more resilient sandstone that had been compacted and fortified over millions of years of sedimentary pressure into the shapes they appear today. 

I know that last section was the most academically book-reportish thing you’ve read here so far.  In my research on Monument Valley, I discovered that there is no one resource or article in print or cyberspace that sums up its geological history so that a non-geologist could understand it.  Each one was exactly the same.  They dropped a few big terms like “Permian Period” and “Laramide Orogeny” and said a few passing words about erosion that would leave the average reader feeling dumber than when they started.  It took exhaustive research (about four hours worth) to piece together what I felt was a thorough, yet concise layman’s description, and damn it, I meant to write it all down to save others like me the same aggravation.  So feel privileged.  This is the best short history of Monument Valley anywhere on the internet… and maybe beyond. 

The sun was shining and the sky was clear blue as we drove west on U.S. Highway 163 in near silence admiring the dusty red landscape, peppered with only small canyons and wide mesas so far.  At one point we passed a flock of sheep grazing from a small patch of grass at the side of the road.  We pulled over to look when out of the flock popped the heads of two small white dogs.  They walked to the edge of the road and stared at us as the sheep continued to graze behind them.  Looking around, I saw no fences or manmade boundaries keeping the sheep in place.  Instead, their owners had put honest-to-God sheep dogs in charge of them, to lead them and protect them from thieves, wolves and curious tourists.  Awesome.

From this point on, the scenery kept getting more and more breathtaking.  The rock formations became taller and more defined and the landscape was painted with even more brilliant reds.  At one point we came around a sharp bend in the road and gasped.  The valley in front of us looked like a huge chalk drawing with alternating reds, oranges and grays.  Even though we were on a blind mountain curve and a sign warned us not to stop, I was still compelled to pull onto the shoulder and snap several pictures.

A few miles later we pulled off the main highway and drove down a dirt road to Mexican Hat – a giant sandstone formation so named because it supposedly looks like an upside down sombrero.  Sixty feet in diameter and perched seemingly precariously atop an abutment a hundred feet high, this was definitely the most gravity-defying sight along this particular stretch of road.  The eastern side of Utah is full of formations like this that seem to ignore the laws of physics.  Had we driven north, we could have seen more otherworldly rock wonders at Natural Bridges National Monument, Goblin Valley State Park (which was featured in the movie Galaxy Quest), and Arches National Park where Edward Abbey, the famous militant naturalist, found the inspiration for his book Desert Solitaire.  But we had a Grand Canyon to get to, so we continued west.

Before getting back in the car, we realized that, at some point between Colorado and here, the temperature had risen to about eighty degrees and we were still in long pants.  We opened the trunk and changed into shorts and sandals right out in the open, broke out some fresh water bottles and continued on our way. 

For the truly adventurous, there are dozens of dirt roads and hiking trails off the main drag that will take you in and among these sandstone beauties.  If we had had more time, a tent, or a non-pregnant passenger, I would have loved to spend a day or seven poking around, taking pictures and seeing the land from a point of view that an interstate tourist could never hope to see.  Since we had none of the above, we continued on our way, stopping to take more pictures of unendingly red cliffs and jagged rocks that resembled Easter Island heads and the fortresses of evil sorcerers. 

Just over the border, in Kayenta, Arizona I looked all over for a Monument Valley shotglass, but none of the four gas stations at the lone intersection in town had one.  As we continued southwest along U.S. Route 160, we checked every gas station and gift shop we passed, but the farther we got from Monument Valley, the bleaker the prospects became until we finally gave up. 

As afternoon progressed and we drove through Arizona’s famous painted desert, the skies started clouding up.  Somewhere in front of us, a cloud appeared to be falling, the telltale sign of rain in the distance.  As it hit ground, another cloud, one of pinkish orange dust, rose up to meet it.  All around us, the desert was taking on an ominous, almost mystical aura. 

We had been listening primarily to country music over the last week.  Driving through the backwoods and prairies of Middle America, it was the only sound that seemed fitting.  But now, as the skies turned dark, lighting flashed in the distance and dust storms formed on the horizon, I decided it was time to change moods.  I had burned two CD’s for just such a scenario.  Labeled “Desert Sunrise” and “Bayou Sunset”, these were my “isolation” mixes.  Some songs conjured up images of bearded drifters in dusty towns, where the only sane people are just passing through (Turn the Page by Bob Seger, Willin by Little Feat, Simple Man by Lynyrd Skynyrd).  Others simply conjured up feelings of a peyote drug trip in the middle of the desert during a full moon (Little Wing by Stevie Ray Vaughn, Mandelgrove by Blue Man Group, One of These Days by Pink Floyd). 

With the image of Kokopellis dancing somewhere in the hidden wastes, I allowed myself to ease into the essence of the desert and the groove of the music even as we drove headlong into a blinding whirlwind of pink sand followed by an equally blinding downpour of rain.

The Grand Canyon is one of the only places in America where being at least fifty miles from the nearest anything doesn’t deter everybody and their illegitimate brother from schlepping their minivans and Winnebago’s out to see it.  The closest interstate is fifty-seven miles away.  The closest city is seventy-nine miles away.  Were this any other attraction, only a handful of Americans would make the trek through the vastly empty landscape, far from the comfort of reliable restrooms and Wendy's.  Yet the Grand Canyon is host to over five million visitors per year – quite a testament to what people will endure to stare at a large hole.  I’d say only Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, with over four million visitors per year, has a comparable “tourists to miles-out-of-the-way” ratio. 

Of course the Park Service has made it as enticing as possible for all who make the journey.  Inside the park they offer everything from restaurants to gift shops to flower-scented bathrooms with clean flushable toilets (a rarity in a national park).  There are even several hotels located within the park boundaries.  Compare that to Joshua Tree National Monument, four hundred miles away in the California desert, where the only facilities are badly ventilated outhouses.

I’ve always felt a certain degree of smugness toward the Grand Canyon.  And not just because it’s a breeding ground for interstate tourists.  Mostly it’s my own feelings of inadequacy.  Simply driving in and standing at a government-sanctioned lookout, I don’t feel as though I’ve earned the right to see what I’m seeing.  I read a quote by a German philosopher once that said, “All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”  Beauty and majesty this breathtaking should only be discovered through at least a modicum of sweat and exertion, not handed to you at the end of a paved road.  Someday, I promised myself, I would earn it.  I would take a backpack and hike down to the bottom of the canyon, sit beside the raging Colorado River that carved it, and far from the screaming kids and clunky SUV’s a mile above me, I would say, “Thank you,” before hiking back out. 

Lauren and I didn’t get to do that on this trip.  Instead, we walked hand-in-hand to the Desert View lookout and gazed out at the canyon with about a hundred other truly dumbfounded people.  Smugness aside, only the most jaded individual could not stand in awe of the Grand Canyon.  We watched as clouds rolled in and played games with light and shadow on the red and brown walls.  We ran inside when it started pouring again, and while Lauren made use of the flushable toilets, I poked around in the gift shop until I found a Grand Canyon shot glass.  I also bought a generic Arizona glass (with "Phoenix" spelled wrong) just for good measure. 

We spent the next hour or so driving from lookout to lookout, admiring each new angle of the canyon.  As sunset approached, we were at the Grand View lookout with several dozen other people.  We were about to head to the next lookout when I saw two guys walk out of the brush nearby.  Apparently there was a trail there that went all the way to the bottom.  Lauren and I hiked down a little just to get away from the crowd and found a nice flat rock to sit on and watch the sunset.  Even just a few hundred feet from the other tourists, it was serenely quiet down here.  Nothing but the wind and the sound of somebody playing a Native American flute up above. 

Ten miles across the chasm, on the North Rim, we could make out the tiny pinpricks of car headlights meandering down the road and the occasional flash of a camera.  How anybody expected a camera flash to illuminate the Grand Canyon is beyond me.  From this far away the dense covering of evergreen trees looked like nothing more than a thick blanket of grass.  The canyon continued to change colors until the sun dipped below the horizon.  As the rainstorm moved farther away we saw the occasional streak of lightning in the clouds. 

It was already pitch black by the time we exited the park and began our 120-mile trip north to Page, Arizona.  We had originally wanted to stay in the hostel in Flagstaff that we’d heard such good things about, but we were still trying to make up for yesterday’s lost time, and Flagstaff was in the opposite direction from where we were headed tomorrow. 

We were both starving but there wasn’t a single restaurant, or any sign of human activity for that matter, in any of the empty transit towns we passed through.  By the time we got to Page, we just wanted to find a motel, grab a bite and get to bed.  We ended up getting lost and drifting down some dark side road in town and the next thing we knew there were blue lights flashing behind us, and a cop was pulling me over.  Apparently I had been doing 55 in a 35.  I played the part of the dumb New Jersey tourist and he let me off with a written warning then gave us directions to the Taco Bell and Super 8. 

ONTO DAY 11