The Completed Moab Experience - Day 2, Part 2

We were exhausted at this point, but Elise insisted on seeing the rest of the park.

Bailey's new boyfriend He's a rock:

Another poetic dead tree:
Elise standing between some "fins":

See if you can spot the design in the rock. We nicknamed this the "Lounging Lady":
Still, exhausted, we finally left the park and mustered up the energy to walk around downtown to see all the boutiques, bookstores, and coffee shops. Admittedly, we didn’t make it far before we fell into some comfy bookstore chairs. Elise picked up Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert by Terry Tempest Williams and it was all over. The book is a call for the preservation of America’s Redrock Wilderness in the canyon country of southern Utah. We were moved by her description of the landscapes we had spent the past few days exploring. Elise wished she had written the following (in fact she’s pretty sure she has written some of the following.) Edit: Terry Tempest Williams broke into our apartment, dug through our personal effects, and stole the following:

“I believe we are in the process of creating our own mythology, a mythology born out of this spare, raw, broken country, so frightfully true, complex, and elegant in its searing simplicity of form. You cannot help but be undone by its sensibility and light, nothing extra. Before the stillness of sandstone cliffs, you stand still, equally bare.”

“There are moments when I long for the canopy and cover of a forest to hide in, to breathe in, to breathe with, and delight in the growing shades and patterns of green. I never forget I inhabit the desert, the harsh, brutal beauty of skin and bones.”

“It’s tough country to visit. It’s even tougher country to live in.”

“What you come to see on the surface is not what you come to know. Emptiness in the desert is the fullness of space, a fullness of space that eliminates time. The desert is time, exposed time, geologic time. One needs time in the desert to see.”

Fueled by inspiring words and good coffee, we headed back into town. We were a little rowdy:

After delaying the inevitable, it was time once again for us to venture out to the campground of doom. We had, of course, already paid for two nights when the raging sandstorm hit and we knew that we had to try again. As we drove in, the sun was going down and the view was breathtaking: (Note: If you look at the left side of this picture, you can see a small slice of the road we drove on to get into this place. Our Sunny has superpowers. So does Bailey.)

Feet on the Dash

We had the perfect evening at the campground. We hiked back into the canyon behind our site, played card games, roasted hotdogs on a lovely fire, and enjoyed the peace and quiet of the area. However, as soon as the lights went out, we were both wide awake and shaking in our boots, terrified that another storm would hit. Holding strong to our bravado, neither of us made a peep, convinced that the other was already sleeping and determined not to be the scaredy cat. It was not a restful night.