We awoke tired from our extra-long day, but happy from our travels. Seems we had landed in another era. The motel hallways the night before were full of what seemed like sister-wives, girls who looked like teenagers in long dresses of various colors roaming the halls with younger children, doing laundry, in and out of rooms together. We honestly could not tell who was in charge of them. If they were one family or married into one family. And more strange, the next morning it was as if they had never been there. Not a one showed at breakfast. Yes, we were in Utah, but all those kids? It seemed as if they would have fed them before departing? Do not think it was a residential situation as they were doing things like purchasing laundry soap at the front desk the night before. Just weird.

There are animals in the US that never appear when the daytime traveler is driving: elk, moose, big horn sheep, mountain goats, cougar or mountain cats. We saw the warning signs and never saw the animals!

This was Day Ten of our travels.We were almost on stimulation overload from the scenery changes. Little did we know there were more dramatic changes before us. I had absolutely no idea how beautiful Utah was! I had only been to the Salt Lake area airport and north areas. Most of the comments below are from Bob, photos are from Molly.

“Quoting from my husband’s travel journal: “This was another day of endless surprises and unexpected panoramas. I did not anticipate the majestic beauty before us. And I had no idea that there would be so much snow. It was a beautiful and nealy cloudless day as wdrove from Green River. We were to drive the scenic route from there to Cedar City via routes 24, 12, 89, and 14. It was an all-day drive of some 320 miles.

Quoting Bob again: “We started with typical high desert. Sage and sand and range land with grazing cattle. Very few other cars, few houses, fewer towns, the occasional butte or other sandstone formation that was seemingly dropped in its current location. These alien structures became more numerous and more varied in shape and color. It was like Legoland met the Mad Potter! Sometimes it seemed as if a draftsman had designed perfectly straight lines and other times it was a modern abstractionist messing with my mind.

“The colors changed with some regularity: reds and yellows, blacks and grays, white Navajo sandstone and a whole crayon box full of other colors. Some were pure, others striated.”

• 

• 

• 

“The Capitol Reef area is where it began to get bizzare; tall thin tablets, honeycombed faces, piles of perfectly symmetrical slabs of stone, smooth faced cliffs and groves of pillars. Some of the formations were hundreds of feet tall; others simple hoodoos. There were even petroglyphs.”

Molly: I have friends who had recently put down a new floor for an Aunt in Washington State. It took them several weeks to accomplish. When I saw the photo below I thought of them with piles and piles of flooring to be installed!

Bob was really good about watching how much time we spent in amazement in each area. This was all before noon