Succulents and More™

Here is an index to all of my posts from our Southwest trip this summer. This will make it easier to access a specific post.

This is the last post from our two-week trip through the Southwest. It’s short because we tried to get home as quickly as possible—and frankly, there isn’t much to see in eastern and central Nevada, at least not along the I-80 corridor. We left Moab, UT after a great breakfast at Eklecticafé . Highly recommended for tasty and more wholesome fare than what many restaurants offer. We stopped briefly at the Arches National Park visitor center so my kids could get their National Park Passports stamped and I snapped one last photo of red rock country: Last photo taken in Arches National Park. Yes, the sky really was that blue. Usually I look forward to returning home from vacation, but this time I didn’t want to leave. Writing this, I really do feel a bit depressed.

After our rafting adventure on the Colorado River we didn’t have much time left to visit the national parks near Moab— Arches and Canyonlands —as well as Dead Horse Point State Park which offers fantastic views of the Colorado River (and was the location of the unforgettable final scene in Thelma & Louise , one of my all-time favorite movies). We decided to do a short tour of Arches National Park since it’s the closest to Moab and it was already past 6pm when we set out. It was actually drizzling when we left Moab and the cloud cover looked to be fairly dense. However, by 7pm the clouds began to break up and pretty soon the sky looked quite dramatic.    

My original idea for the day had been to visit Arches and Canyonlands National Park right outside of Moab. But I realized that my family wasn’t as enthused as I was about visiting yet another couple of parks dedicated to rocks so I suggested we go rafting on the Colorado River instead. It took zero arm-twisting to convince them. Fortunately, we found an outfitter that still had four openings on such short notice.  

The first stop of the day before leaving Window Rock was to see the rock formation for which the capital of the Navajo Nation is named. I was astounded by how perfectly round the opening in the rock was; I expected more of an arch. In the Navajo language it is called “Tségháhoodzání,” which means “rock with hole through it.” Window Rock in the capital of the Navajo Nation Speaking of the Navajo language (called “Diné bizaad” in Navajo), it is still spoken by 120,000 people. In fact, during our stay in the Navajo Nation I overheard quite a few people speaking to each other in Navajo. There is also an all-Navajo AM radio station, KTNN, which we listened to yesterday our our way to Canyon de Chelly . They even played country music in Navajo. The Navajo language played a central role during World War II. Navajos were recruited by the U.S. Marine Corps to create a Navajo code to be used in the Pacific theater. Thanks to their efforts, the U.S. was able to take Iwo Jima and other isl...