I slept a few hours on Saturday night and woke up from a dream so intense and strange that it felt like amnesia to wake up. I remember parts of it, but it doesn’t make sense yet. It was one of those normal-seeming dreams with very real-seeming feelings and yet nothing specific stands out.
I took the longest route to the Grand Canyon, leaving at 6:30 in the morning and arriving at 7:00 in the evening. I drove through Apache National Forest which was full of winding roads through mountains (and no guardrails) so I couldn’t speed at all (though I tempted 100 mph when I could). There were so many surprises, strange mountains and houses and cows by the side of the road and crows so large I think they were bigger than my cat. And I finally, finally, made it to the meteor crater.
I took painkillers and never stopped to eat, and I wasn’t sure why, but I made it to the Grand Canyon at sunset exactly. Unfortunately, I had to drive the next three hours in the dark. Most of Arizona is apparently a dark sky state, so even hotel signs aren’t lit up at night. I was pretty brain-dead by then and I wished I had someone with me because I kept making dumb decisions. Eventually I found a hotel and got some sleep. I was ready to curse Tuba City and the whole surrounding area, but when I woke up, I discovered that I was in the middle of the painted desert and at the edge of a Hopi reservation. It was so shocking that I re-drove some of the roads I traveled the night before in the dark, but it was some of the prettiest land I’d ever seen. Unfortunately it was hard to catch the painted desert on camera, because it was so far away and wide.
I looked at part of the South Rim of the Canyon again but didn’t travel the rest because there were so many tourists and cars. I couldn’t bear to leave my car and I was still exhausted from the night before, so I just drove back to Flagstaff and south through Sedona. Then it was raining and I listened to a Peter Jennings interview on the radio.

Music: Cranes – loved, Led Zeppelin – II and III, Death in June – but what ends when the symbols shatter?, Easy Rider soundtrack, Blonde Redhead – misery is a butterfly
Food: Dairy Queen root beer floats