Day 112: Tuesday, October 26, 2010Zion National Park; Grand Canyon National Park 
Heading out of the National Park, we cruised along the Mt. Carmel Highway heading west, Zion's famous road, featuring some crazy tunnels that went on for so long all you could see was darkness until quite suddenly the sun flooded you with her dazzle, blinding you upon your return to the real world.
'The horizontal lines, commonly called crossbedding, represent layers of windblown sand that built up into sand dunes. These dunes were then buried, and the sand grains glued together by calcite and iron oxide to form sandstone. Crossbedding can be seen in many places along the Zion-Mt. Carmel Highway.
'The vertical lines are less common. They are actually shallow cracks that result from stress and erosion on the rock surface. These cracks are probably caused by expansion and contraction, temperature changes, wetting/drying, or a combination of these processes.'
En route to the Grand Canyon, we drove onto the Navajo Reservation once more, marked by the collection of booths and tables decorated with fine handicrafts and jewelery along the side of the mountain road. Auntie Cindy and I could not resist. We decided to make a quick stop to marvel at their works and see if any were worth purchasing for New Day for Children. This 'quick stop', of course, ended up taking a couple hours, as we engaged in several conversations with these Navajo women.
One woman, Lynn, explained to us that they all belonged to a group on the reservation from which they had to rent these spaces on the side of the road to sell. With the tourist season slowing and coming quickly to an end, these women were braving the heat and sun and idiotic questions for very little business. While we stood examining the intricate and beautiful jewelery on display, dozens of other tourists stopped by to do the same; hardly any purchased even a small piece. The prices these ladies were offering were so incredibly low that we wondered how they eked out a living. Lynn confessed that it always got difficult every winter, “But,” she said with a smile, “it always seems to work out.”
Several of the women from whom we purchased jewelery, upon hearing about New Day, donated pieces to our cause. These were mothers of young girls, who had heard of the sex trafficking and slave trade and were comforted to know how their jewelery would be used. 
Another woman, Susie, proudly pointed out the pieces that her 11-year-old daughter had made, having learned her mother. She dearly loved her daughter, Mariah, and agreed with me when I told her Mariah was quite gifted.
Consequently we entered Grand Canyon at just about sunset, and the Ranger at the gate recommended we catch sunset at Desert View, the first lookout from the Eastern entrance.
Once again, the wind bit at my face and hands and bare legs, and I regretted not grabbing my gloves and another jacket before running to the overlook. I was simply too excited to catch my first glimpse of the famed Grand Canyon. My theory in preparation for and all along this trip has been blissful ignorance. I have avoided finding out what I am supposed to be seeing before I get there; I just want to arrive and be amazed and caught unexpected. 
And I was. Despite the coldness at the South Rim, there were still quite a few tourists about. And just as I reached the railing and was breathing in the canyon air, the tourists disappeared. Startled, I glanced around.
“Where'd they all go? I wonder if Jake farted.” I laughed out loud and looked for whom had spoken.
The speaker was a blond woman standing beside me, and she was referring to her 12-year-old son with a bemused smile. She was one of the most fascinating people I have yet met. She and her son are from Western Australia and have been traveling around the States and Canada since August, all the way up the West Coast to Alaska, and off to New England until December 21st, when they return to Australia. She exuded life and curiosity, genuineness and sweetness, and I was charmed. We conversed back and forth of the sights we had seen, the people we had met, the experiences we had enjoyed. It seemed she was as curious about me as I was about her.
“But really,” she said, turning her whole body towards me. “It has been a long trip, several months now, and he really does fart. Stinks up the whole RV, he does.”
We then came to the part of the conversation I had expected, pertaining to my relation to Matthew, who was waving his stick around making exploding noises: “And is he yours? ...Or your husband's? ...Boyfriend's?...Or...partner's?”
We set up camp that night where the high elevation drove the temperatures below freezing. The only excitement was when I ran off into the dark to the bathroom with no flashlight and fell over several large rocks, cutting open my toe and sending me sprawled on my back in the dirt. It was pretty hilarious.
On an unrelated note, this was also the night I began reading Donald Miller.
