Turtle Rock and Mrs. Butterworth - Drive to New Mexico

I put 861 miles on the old farm truck and drove 6 hours to New Mexico

to celebrate my mother and sister's birthdays.  

I have driven this route many times over many years.

(This was the first time without air conditioning - not recommended!)

 

 This is Hwy. 6 between Price, Utah and I-70.

This show the vastness of the landscape.

Miles and miles of dirt . . . and yet I think it is beautiful!

 

 In this modern world some things are still done the old fashioned way.

 Moving cattle at the Ft. Lewis Bull Testing Center in Colorado.

 This rock is south of Moab, Utah.

When my children were little they called this formation

Mrs. Butterworth's.

Can you see the resemblance?

They knew this was around the halfway point of going to both sets of grandparent's homes. I have always wanted to explore the cave at the bottom of it.  I suspect it was a rancher's temporary home, or maybe a fugitive's hideaway!

 Just a little way down the road from Mrs. Butterworth's is Turtle Rock.  

I couldn't find a good place to pull over to take a picture.

 So I just aimed the camera out the back window
while keeping my eyes on the road ahead.

If you enlarge the picture you can see the turtle!

 Wilson's Arch

 A very cool sandstone arch just outside of Moab,

 This is a very lovely rest stop by Wilson's Arch just outside of Moab.

 I love the way the old Cottonwood trees look amongst the red rock.

 When our daughter turned 10 we met my family at this rest stop

to celebrate her birthday.  None of us could take the time to spend extra days

at each others houses so we met in the middle.

It was a great party.
We had lunch and even managed to have cake and ice cream.
Afterward we went climbing on the sandstone rocks.

On a side note, this is my brother.  I stayed at his house while in New Mexico. If you enlarge this picture you will see his dog on his lap. She is 12 years old, has only 6 teeth and has recently recovered from breast cancer. She loves my brother though, and wants to go with him wherever he is - even it means helping operate heavy equipment! (And I mean heavy equipment - front end loaders, graders, etc. You get the picture!)

Drive to New Mexico

On my trip to the states, I went to visit my mother in New Mexico. The drive is about six hours from my Utah home. My daughter and her two kids went with me. My DD thought I should take a few pictures of the drive to The Land of Enchantment."

This is on the outskirts of Shiprock, NM
This is the Navajo Reservation.

Their homes are quite humble.
I love that there is this spot of blue amongst all the brown.

It is actually quite green for this time of year.

Here is the actual Shiprock. Named by pioneers traveling through the area, they thought they saw a clipper ship in the distance. The rock stands 1800 feet tall. Bud and his family used to picnic at the base of the rock in the spring, Easter I think. It is a beautiful site to me.

Here is a modern Hogan, the traditional Navajo home. It is generally hexagonal or octagonal with the door always facing the east to welcome the rising sun for good wealth and fortune. We noticed that there are not many left standing along our route. We were hard pressed to find one to take a picture of.

This is really quite desolate looking scenery.
This is what the reservation looks like for miles upon miles.

This is Hogback, New Mexico. This is the edge of the reservation. Reaching this point in the trip meant Mom's was just down the road - about 1/2 hour down the road. Bud grew up only a few miles further down the road from the Hogback. His father had a dairy farm in Waterflow.

I just wanted to show you a small portion of our drive to and from New Mexico. This tends to be the most tedious part of the trip because the scenery doesn't change much.