“Painted desert more like tainted yogurt.” “Nice.” Ed and I had
fallen into our typical road trip routine of ironically bad jokes and playing
the worst songs we could find. By now we had found our way to a road trip
classic for us, “Pinch Me” by Barenaked Ladies. We had been driving for a good
three and a half hours and now found ourselves on the I-40 just miles away from
the painted desert. “Rocks more coc-“ “Wait, Ed, I think we’re here.” A vast
expanse of prismatic rocks had just appeared before us. Shades of purple,
white, red and brown rock were stacked on top of each other like multicolored
pancakes.
We continued along I-40 weaving in and out of valleys of
purple and brown and over mesas white and rusty orange. A giant brown highway
sign told us ‘PAINTED DESERT VISITOR CENTER’. We pulled off and got out of the
car into a paved yet dusty parking lot. I looked around and saw just about what
I expected, a ranger station, a gift shop, those dirty national park restrooms
that are a seemingly ubiquitous sign of the outdoors. We marched past all of
these buildings, our outdoorsman prowess was way too advanced to be hindered by
some park ranger handing us a map. After all, we were in fact the duo who had
climbed Flat Iron in the Superstition Mountains mostly and accidentally off of
the trail.
We started on down the trail and soon fell into our typical
trail talk, “Rob what’s that enzyme you study in lab?”, “I dunno man I really
like her.”, “I will literally die if I have to work there for another summer.”.
Between our long conversations we would pass pieces of petrified wood or see a
rabbit dart across the trail ahead of us. Luckily for us the trail was fairly
empty. Tourist season had died down and now only those brave enough to endure
the hot Arizona summers were left in the state. We continued along past carved
mountains of multicolor stone, crunching our shoes into the trail with a steady
rhythm.
After a while our conversations had died down and the sound
of buzzing insects and rustling creosote bushes became our soundtrack. Ed
always says I don’t take the time to enjoy the scenery when I’m hiking so in an
attempt of appeasement I stopped, turned around and looked back on the great
expanse of color we had hiked up. Being out in nature always makes me feel so small.
I felt like a tiny speck consistent of a black shirt, black shorts and a black
hat in an expanse of white, orange, brown, purple, green and grey rock. “I
think we should probably think about turning around.” It was late afternoon and
we had about an hour’s hike back that I did not want to do in the dark. “Yea, we
probably should.”
We were soon back at the parking lot with our Camelbacks
empty and socks stained brown with dirt. Brown socks were always the sign of a
good hike to me, they’re a badge of honor displaying for the whole world our prowess
over nature. We got back in the car and threw on Uncle Kracker’s “Drift Away”.
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