Day 6...continued

We left Bryce Canyon and moved on towards Zion National Park, which is virtually around the bend. Just when you think you've really seen the most beautiful thing, Utah gives you Zion and you can't decide which is better. Bryce is delicate and more detailed, like lace. Zion is bigger, the palette is softer, and the rock formations look like tufts of flakey pastries, while Bryce's "hoodoos" are more like a million red-orange candles dripping with wax. These pictures don't really show what I'm talking about. You could see all the thin layers of rock formed one on top of the other, like a phylo dough.




Here's the tunnel we drove through on the way in:

So, guess where I am? You'll never guess. Not ever. I was in Moses Lake, Washington yesterday, which is in central Washington. That's where we went from Seattle to see the rodeo. That is the little town where Mycol's great grandfather lives and hosts a family reunion every year in conjunction with the local fair and "Rodeo Round-up". I am still, obviously, trying to catch up on my blog. Dammit. I think today is Sunday, right? And we had planned on being in Montana tonight. But for reasons that I will not get into just yet my mother and I left Moses Lake and headed BACK WEST again!!!! An hour and a half WEST, AGAIN. For Mycol, so that he could spend an extra day with his dad and his aunt. She and her husband and mother-in-law have a "cabin" near Roslyn, Washington. Get out your maps and figure it out. It's right off of I-90, the highway that runs from one end of Washington to the other through the middle. I'll posts pictures and stories later, but for now let's talk about what came after Zion.
From Pittsburgh to Zion was a wonderfully paced trip. Beautiful country. Lots of fun. After Zion, well, things changed. It didn't happen all at once. First, we had to travel through miles and miles and miles of this:

It wasn't the first time I'd thought it (I thought it back in Nebraska), but I thought, "What if we were space travelers, and this car was our space exploring vehicle, and this planet was unknown prior to our exploration, and this is what we'd see and report on." The desert is one of several places that make you notice that the earth is a planet. Catch my drift?
And then, suddenly, the space explorers come upon a crossroads where there is still nothing for miles and miles other than the three buildings on three of the four corners of the crossroads. Two gas stations, one bigger than the other, each with a gift shop and port-o-johns, and some other building. You'd think we'd find out what the other building was, but we were taken aback by the aliens. This one rolled up on us out of nowhere and started trying to mate. He said he was from Illinois where he grows corn and soy and he pulled this tiny alien over to show us and called it his "boy" and said he was looking for a new mommy and maybe a new baby brother soon after. He asked us if we was "Latino" and said he's got a BRICK house back home with plenty of room for us and if'n we'd like to come for a visit just give him a holler and he'll send a plane ticket promptly. He was the spittin' image of my hen-pecked uncle Chuck, so we figured we'd better report on him. 'Specially when he give us his business card and it read Charles Hunt. Coincidence? I think not.

We parted ways with Charles and headed for Vegas. Here is a sign that Las Vegas lies ahead:

Those things are used to power these things:


And here's my lucky lady trying her hand with lady luck:

She couldn't resist, but she didn't win anything other than 3 extra plays, or something like that. She still finds money on the ground everywhere we go, though.
Stay tuned