Bottles and Cans and Trash, Oh My!

Map: Zion to Farmington NM via Monument Valley---390 miles

Saturday, 30th March 2013

We breakfasted at the Pioneer Cafe in Springdale--where we have before, and with the same excellent results.  The place was surprisingly quiet for a holiday weekend.

The waitresses were all more or less sweet young things, all wearing the ubiquitous low rise jeans that appear to be attempting a reverse birth up their wazoos.  Will this butt-ugly (pun intended) fashion ever fade?  Wouldn't a slender woman feel more attractive with a waistband somewhere up near her natural waistline instead of being a fashionably fugly muffin top?  Judging by the harsh passive aggressive remarks a Facebook friend got after posting a vintage photo of her young and pretty self in circa 1976 high waist jeans, I was deeply irritated to realize even middle aged women dress not to please themselves or even potential partners but to seek social homogeneity with other women.  God forbid you actually like something around your waist, least it suggest the horror of granny panties.

I'm so glad I'm a man that can dress as he damn well pleases.  That's gay cowboy to you.  And it so happens my husband is in the middle of sewing me a pair of pantywaist jeans.

We threaded through Zion with about ten thousand other cars, but fortunately missed being held back so an RV could be escorted through the vintage 1930 Zion-Mount Carmel Tunnel.  Traffic thinned out past the eastern entrance to the park, and we enjoyed gliding down to Mount Carmel.

East of Kanab Utah on US 89

I've always liked Kanab.  I suppose we ought to stay there some time, although it never makes sense in our travels.  This day the turn here/turn there main street was under construction---which I swear was the same case several years ago.  This time there was the suggestion of a median being installed.  We continued on US 89, enjoying the red cliffs east of town.

Past the site of Paria, the highway veers south and drops into the desolate territory around Deep Water.  Even on a mild day the scenery evokes thirst, and by the time we got to Page I was craving a big Cherry Coke from McDonald's.  That's all what Mickey Dee is good for: piss stops and Cokes.  Yeah, they sorta go together, so the latter is now a rare treat.

We gassed up across the street (57.3 MPG from Cedar City to Page---it's predominately downhill all the way) and I moved into the passenger seat to take a nap.  I was sitting there, gazing off into space as my husband finished pumping the gas when I heard a short high speed skid.  I focused on the intersection nearby just to see a new black Camaro pull out into the path of a large pickup.  Twenty years ago it would have been a big smash up, but the truck's electronic stability control allowed the driver to veer off at the last second, still slamming the Camaro but with a more glancing blow.  Within a minute the sheriff was there, and as we drove off towards town another sheriff was on the way---as well as two Page Police. It seemed an overreaction, since the woman just sat in the Camaro, probably in shock and awe, not in any physical injury.

The wreck didn't really surprise me.  After all, we were in Arizona now, and I've witnessed more wrecks there first hand than anywhere else.  Arizonians are terrible drivers: fast, loose and unfocused on what's going on around them.  Obviously.

We left Page on Arizona 98, passing the coal burning Navajo Generating Plant and its attendant cloud of yellow smog overhead.  Soon thereafter we got stuck behind a Navajo carting a bladder of water in the back of his pickup over hill and dale while texting.  Add an unusual amount of traffic because US 89 slid down a mountainside south of town, it was awhile before we could get around him---at least longer than it took for the Arizonans to get around us both.

I awoke near the crossroads to Shonto to a familiar sight in these parts---at least to me: a sprinkle hitting the windshield.  This was perhaps the fourth time I've been over the Colorado Plateau, and Mother Nature has at least thrown some spittle at me.  That's all it would be today---the passing clouds congregating and parting, dropping and lifting veils of verga.

The desert grows interesting again driving east on US 160.  A north facing rim of rock captures moisture and the juniper grow larger and more numerous.  We pass under the coal conveyer coming off the upper plateau to a silo, the terminus to the electric railroad to the power plant.  At Marsh Pass a south-facing red rim joins in and homesteads grow more numerous in the colorful box canyons.

We switch drivers again at Kayenta, a town with an unprecedented amount of revivalist churches.  I hope they give the locals some spiritual succor, because the town is hardly uplifting.

Homesteads in Monument Valley

This is the first time we've taken US 163, the detour through Monument Valley.  As we move along in traffic traveling at anywhere between forty and eighty miles an hour the first thing that comes to mind is that there was no US highway here sixty years ago.  No pavement.  Probably a lot less homesteads, too---although that's hard to judge.  These homesteads don't thin much the farther one travels from Kayenta, but continue right in to the valley---a place I expected to be largely uninhabited.

When the movies used to come out here to make some grand Technicolor Western, it was quite an expedition.  I recalled the vaguely irritating documentary Chris and Don: A Love Story---and how writer Christopher Isherwood was invited to stay at one of these remote productions.  Don's recollection was of a very young man on classic road trip---and what the crew might have thought of him and his much older man.  This wasn't the set for a musical, after all.  Being one of those free-flowing documentaries, the movie was never named nor the invitee---I supposed Isherwood's voluminous diaries could be consulted for that---and apparently nothing was ever directly said of their May-September romance, as to be expected of the 1950s.  The scene in the documentary, like Monument Valley, is an enigma---history at once unrecorded, erased and rewritten to please the current audience.

I did not find a Monument Valley in all its VistaVision splendor.  The scale seems less dramatic.  Perhaps it was the day's opaque light---the homesteads, the numerous empty kiosks to fill for the tourist high season, the distracting glitter of beer bottles on the side of the road.  At closer range one could turn their back to these things, but then some of the sense of vastness was lost.  There is a natural energy to the place, a vitality of atmosphere colliding and colluding with a more solid brotherhood.  Perhaps I should have just closed my eyes.

Perhaps I should just forget about Chris and Don: A Love Story.

At times like these it's best to remember that there are no destinations in a road trip.  In the end it won't be the national park or other must-see one recalls first and foremost, but some fascinating moment in someone else's everyday world.

US 163 continues northeast, a surprisingly narrow ribbon unrolling downward over the broken landscape.  Behind us were often interesting far views of Monument Valley, although I wouldn't enjoy the long climb or searching out the few spots to pull off and enjoy the scenery.  It would be spectacular only in the morning light or at sundown.  Towards Mexican Hat the highway takes an even steeper pitch to the San Juan River, and Patsy really took off.

The San Juan Inn is perched on a ledge above the river, a very appealing situation and looking like a mid century modern resort that has seen better days.  The vibe wasn't any better---and upon consulting Google the many reviews have gone from good to bad in the last few years.  No one wants to be stuck in Mexican Hat with a misplaced reservation and no where else to stay.

Thee Mexican Hat

The sun decided to pop through just as we passed the locale's namesake, the Mexican Hat, making for a good if not common photo.

More off the tourist radar is The Valley of the Gods.  We didn't drive all the way in on the well-graded dirt road, but far enough to get an unobstructed view of the layered landscape.  As we waded across a shallow creek, we passed an old man beside his car, wiping down the slight dust and splatter with a napkin.

The Valley of the Gods

US 163 ends just outside of Bluff, Utah---a charming, threadbare old oasis and farm community on the floodplain of the San Juan.  Some ten years ago we enjoyed an excellent breakfast and atmosphere on the porch of the Twin Rocks Trading Post.  The place still looks sharp, and Google reviews all remark very good to excellent.

The scenery quickly degrades into oil country driving east on Utah 162, and becomes positively barren when the highway turns into Colorado 41.  It looks like it hasn't rained here for twenty years---the dirty orange clay merely whiskered with occasional stubble.  At US 160 again, I made a wrong turn to the right, into the sun.  I realized my mistake within a couple of miles, but not before gaping at the vast, sparkling sea of bottles on the side of the highway.  I wondered if the next car we passed would take a drunkard's serve towards us.

"We could spend a couple of hours here and pick up enough bottles to pay for this trip," I said.

"Or build a bottle house," rejoined my husband.

He was only a day off.  We'd be passing the bottle houses outside of Taos on Sunday.

I turned around and headed east on US 160 and then south on US 491 towards Shiprock.  The rock itself rose out of the desert haze, a gigantic monolith more majestic than anything in Monument Valley. Yet my attention was distracted by its distance, the traffic and the strange happenings along the shoulder of this desolate highway.  People parked out in the middle of nowhere as if by prearrangement.  A dog trotting along on some sixth sense.  Dead dogs that didn't make it.

Welcome to Farmington, New Mexico

I struggle to make sense of it all---to try to be honest about the natural beauty, the harsh lands and the trash.  If this nation had somehow continued in its own sealed off world perhaps it would be different.  But when an old Navajo begs for his granddaughter in the parking lot of Motel 6 in Farmington I probably feel as uncomfortable and disgusted as the earliest pioneers.  There has never been a cultural understanding between us, merely an uneasy truce over beliefs and promises left unfulfilled.  I may never hear the old man speaking his truth.