I am looking up at the desert sky. I am pretty sure that's not a Sting song, but it very well could be. It could also be a fragrance. I must have a fragrance of my own because the desert fly loves me. I must smell dead.
I pulled up short of Natural Bridges National Monument, but I am much further than I thought I was going to go. I was too tired. I just stopped my bike, walked off the side of the road, and went into the desert (of Desert Sky fame).
The reason I can walk into the desert is I am carrying 8 liters of water. This could also be the reason I couldn't make it up the hill.
I am in Utah. The first 8/10ths of the day was a bit lackluster. I left the reservoir, biked down a canal, noticed how the canal kept everything wet while I dried out. I was in Utah before I knew it. Their state sign is an impossibly ugly piece of Photoshop. The landscape was a bit like eastern Colorado. I went to a town called Monticello, which is solid evidence that America is repeating itself.
After a shake, I went to Blanding, and decided to keep moving. Here's where it gets beautiful. Bicentennial highway runs along a canyon valley until it turns up into a narrow slit in the canyon, winds through that and opens on a lush valley lined with red canyons on both sides. Despite being the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and being mostly downhill, I stopped and took photographs for You because -- wow -- it was amazing. A thin shaft of light came through the clouds and lit the distant canyon wall LionKing-ish.
About five miles after that, I lost the will to pedal. I boiled rice with a packet of mac n cheese mix and lay down to write this.
The woman in the Blanding info center said this is the darkest sky in the nation. I suppose that's another way of saying, there ain't nothing there. I look forwards to some stargazing, light sleep outdoors, and then getting on the road so I can skip Lake Powell and its cursed jet skis and maybe make another park.
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