Rock-stravaganza

About a third of the way across Utah we left Route 50 (“the Loneliest Road) for our first non-blue highway, Route 70. We were a little concerned to have to hit a boring old interstate with trucks and billboards, but . . . what a surprise . . . this highway has hardly any development along the way, very little traffic, and possibly the most gorgeous scenery of any major highway in America. If you like rocks, it’s hard to concentrate on your driving!



Route 70 traverses central Utah past geologic formations called Castle Valley to the north and the San Rafael Swell and San Rafael Reef to the south.

You can see where the “Castle” name comes from; the eroded mesas do look like fanciful castles and battlements. The “Swell” and “Reef” monikers relate to the origins of these formations—laid down at the bottom of an ancient sea. The rocks are in striking bands of color--red, white, yellow, green, black—because the biological activity in the sea at different times influenced the color of the sediments.









Farther along, in eastern Utah, the road passes north of the region that holds Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park. Which reminds me: On our first Blue Highways trip, we had a really wonderful visit to Arches National Park—a place that, as an Ed Abbey fan, I’d long been dying to see. (If you know Abbey’s books, you’ll get this joke: After college, I worked briefly as a volunteer park ranger at the Grand Canyon and, for a time while I was there, lived alone in a trailer in the park’s Desert View campground—I called it my “Desert View Solitaire” experience).

Anyway, one of my student lab assistants from Saint Lawrence University in Canton, NY--Ann Sibley, yes, from the famous Sibley birding family--had gone on to work at Arches as a park naturalist. We got in touch, and she gave us the insider’s tour. With Ann as our guide we hiked all around, to little-known arches that are off the official trails—the ones the rangers know about but the tourists don’t see. Quite an amazing experience.

Driving by the exit for the park, we couldn’t help but wonder where Ann is today, and what she has gone on to do in life. One of the wonderful things about the peripatetic academic life is that you meet so many interesting people . . . and then, when you travel, you get to see them again, and pick up right where you left off, and that’s wonderful.

But you also lose touch with a lot of interesting people. Even in this era of Facebook and IM and cellphones, I’m not sure it’s possible to sustain REAL relationships with the huge network of people one can meet in a lifetime. Maybe that’s just the way it is.

Anyway, Ann, wherever you are, thanks for a cool tour. And we hope to get back to Arches one of these days!