Scenery Saturation

I came on this trip with my usual assortment of activities to do in my spare time. Books to read, embroidery projects, even a coloring book and pencils--those adult types you can suddenly find everywhere. I had expected to write a lot. And much to my surprise, after the first week, I have had no time to do any of it!

No time to read? Come on! I always read in the car.

Nope. During the day we are so busy traveling through this amazing countryside I don't dare pick up a book and become oblivious to all but the story taking place in it's pages. Instead, I am absorbing towering cliffs in every shade of  coral, pink, white, and red.

Colorado River Canyon Road out of Moab, Utah

I am soaking in vistas that spread out below me as I try to stand upright against the swirling winds that are alternately threatening to blow me over the side, or trying to push me backwards from the edge.

Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument

I am snapping photographs with both my iPhone and my little digital camera as quickly as I see them, before they disappear around the next curve in the road. No. There is no time to read.

Back at the RV, we unpack the car from the myriad of travel guides, pamphlets, park maps, and the assorted snacks we carried out in the morning, neatly contained in a canvas bag, that have now become scattered around the car. We gather up the empty water bottles and the picnic cooler and grab the latest purchase from gift stores or grocery stores and drag it all inside to be sorted and put away.

Then it's time to scrounge up some dinner. Finally, somewhere around 8 (or 9) we have cleared the detritus of the day and I am ready to snuggle into jammies and slippers and relax. Until Larry says, "Have you downloaded pictures yet?"

Pictures! The curse of the digital age! Today, as I stood under a cliff, water dripping down splattering my shoes, and gazed at the steep canyon walls and lush canyon floor before me, I heard another fellow trekker say to his wife, "Remember when we thought 24 was a lot?".

Indeed! I do. We waited weeks to get the pictures back, and then hoped they were in focus and we could remember where we were when we took them.

So now, instead of reading, or watching TV and doing needlepoint, or writing about the days adventures, I am downloading pictures off of my phone and my camera, filing them in folders so I will know where we took them, and then scrolling through to label, delete, or crop.

And when I finally crawl into bed, I have reached Scenery Saturation. Even if I had time to write, my senses are overloaded and the words get lost. I need three or four more hours of peace and quiet in this day just to reboot.

Fortunately, a good night's sleep provides it, because I wake up each morning ready to go out and do it again!

There has been so much to see, and I promise on my next post, I will share some of the magic we have seen. But first.....

I have to go download some pictures.