The smell of Desert Sage

I told Sophie I'd show her the Grand Canyon... So here they are. A bunch of lovely pictures from the 24th of August. There's a fire on the north rim of the canyon. Can you see it?






Today we took a longer route to the Grand Canyon than we'd originally planned on.
We had to cross Joshua tree country, but while crossing the Colorado River, Ennis started telling me about Oatman, AZ (just past Boundary Cone Peak on the old 66). We decided to take the detour. It was excellent. The tiny little one street town was overrun by wild burros that came down the mountain looking for food. The tourists are sold carrots and water, the only things they're allowed to feed the cuddly animals. Signs hang on all the buildings reminding us that the burros are wild and may bite or kick, though they seem pretty gentle to me.
While there we also took a look at the Oatman hotel where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard honeymooned. It made me think of Irwin, and listening to Death Cab For Cutie.
We drove up the 40, which has taken up much of the old Route 66, and tried to get post card stamps at a post office in Kingman. The post office was closed for lunch, which I found supremely amusing because it harkened me back to the towns in Montana with no post office or post boxes.
Anyways, we made it up to the Grand Canyon and spent some time on the Southern Rim and in the gallery where they have an exhibit on the Native Americans who live there, the Havasupai. It was all so breath-taking. And no pictures, especially not mine can truly capture the vastness of such a place. It's sheer immensity and the length of time it took to forge, not to mention the age of the rock everywhere but especially at the bottom... It's incredibly humbling. It's impossible to think that your problems are huge when you're looking at it, because next to that canyon they are inconsequential. A speck of the sands of history.
After the Grand Canyon we drove on. The night is beautiful, with black clouds that drift over the moon, making the edges silver, and leaving patches of sky clear and full of stars. But even though there are bright clear patches and intensely silver linings, the clouds themselves spill rain and lightning. The sheet lightning looks like beautiful pink gold jelly fish tentacles. The rod lightning is crisp white and strikes the ground. Both the flashes and the silvery moonlight filtered through the clouds are just enough to illuminate the miles-long trains that stretch and crawl on the Santa Fe line, and the sage bushes that are showy but aromatic on the fields to either side of us. Their smell intensified by warm rainy air.
We crossed the border to New Mexico tonight. Tomorrow there's more world to see.