Goosenecks

We started our long day of driving by by going back to the dam outside of Page Arizona

Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border

Goosenecks

Natural bridges

Another bridge. I think they have 4 or 5. Much prefer Arches

Where we stayed in the mountains: a 140 year old former brothel

interesting decor

Our Miss Kitty room Small but clean and very comfortable

steakhouse below our room where we ate that night as we were far from anything else. It was good

Mexican hat mesa

the road between Goosenecks and Natural bridges looked like it was going into an enormous brown and tan striped wall. Maybe there's a tunnel, Steve said hopefully. The nicely paved road morphed into a narrow gravel road full of switchbacks that went up, up, the mesa

view of our road from one of the upper switchbacks. Nice road way, way down in the valley

on top of the mesa

another of the bridges. I was not impressed. Stay tuned for Arches

Part of the difficulty planning this trip was that the main attractions were not evenly spaced apart or there wasn't anything affordable near where most of them were clustered. After we left Page, we had no choice but to drive miles and miles across barren Navajo Nation.  Monument Valley went on for miles with isolated buttes protruding in the plains. Goosenecks was a state park that consisted of a series of twisty San Juan River gorges. A single bend is called a horseshoe. We had passed the other day on seeing the Horseshoe bend of the Colorado outside of Page as it involved a mile hike up a sand dune in 90 degree heat. I thought we'd see another horseshoe section of the Colorado in Canyonlands National Park but it turned out we didn't have time to see it.

What is the difference between an arch and a bridge? One is caused by a river eroding it and the other wind. It was hard to see the white clay bridges in natural bridges national monument.

Our next stop was 40 miles south of Moab in an old brothel hard to find off of a steep mountain grade. We had passed by it but we had to go 3 miles down the mountain to be able to turnaround.

It had a long porch where I sipped the bit of wine I had left. They had plenty of cats that jumped on to my lap as I relaxed. After dinner, deer came out to watch us. I saw lazuli buntings for the first time. It was a nice place to stay.