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.
