Red Dirt

We have traveled from Moab to Monument Valley, close to the AZ border. Moab was Arches National Park and Canyonlands NP. You can see from Cathy’s pics the awesome scope of the landscape. Millennia back, this place was a sea. When it drained and dried, from upward thrusts happening from collisions of the earth’s crusts, (all happening in super slo mo over 100’s of 1000’s of years), it left sand which became sandstone as layer upon layer of sludge and muck piled on with super weight compacting the sand with the earth’s transitions. So much of this sand was embedded with iron content which oxidized, or “rusted” over time so that it turned the sandstone its reddish tones. Harder than the muck that embedded it so long ago, when weather changes happened, the muck was the first to erode leaving all these magnificent red rock sculptures. Within our “modern” times, this sand stone has been weathering back to sand. It stains impossibly! You can’t get the red out. If you have been to Hawaii, the same thing happened there. They sell tourist shirts dyed red from the dirt. So does Utah.

Anyhow, we are living in a take your shoes off at the door world. But it is OK. Monument Valley is where Director John Ford filmed a number of John Wayne Films. It is the prototypical Utah landscape. The place where Detroit came and brought a car up by helicopter to the top of a “monument” to film a commercial. We are going out for a sunset 4 wheel drive tour this evening to get within the rocks. Excited.