Painted desert

Friday Albie, Court and I set off for Flagstaff on our epic roadtrip. Saturday we drove up to Grand Canyon, where I took a shitload of pics and also almost shat myself standing on the edge, staring down into the abyss. I am NOT good with heights, I get dizzy just standing on my toes...

On the way up we took a detour to the Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument and the Wupatki National Monument, a 35-mile loop of stunning beauty. We drove through an otherwordly landscape - first of black soil, hardened lava and strange tree shapes, then the painted desert of the Kaibab National Forest. It was almost empty out there, very few tourists bother to check it out or even know about it I suspect. Their loss and our gain; the silence out in the desert is a beautiful thing in itself.

All pics from Sunset Crater and the desert here.

Lava, black soil and the vegetation that has crawled back in the appx 800 years since the last eruption.




Sunset crater - this time it's only clouds...


Am I strange to find dead trees cool?


Down in the desert we found the ruins of this 900+ year old adobe. Back then the climate must have been wetter, or I don't think humans could have made a living here. The wind has created some crazy stone shapes in this area.



The ruins of the adobe. The structure is cleverly built into the natural forms of the rock.


Court, queen of the desert (snort, snort). He was threatened with divorce when I started quoting T. S. Eliot and Shelley to Albie.


...boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away...