This hidden gem is one that’s been on my road trip bucket list for many years, and when I drove the Loneliest Road two springs ago, I finally got my chance. These strange stone kilns have been empty for more than a century—but thanks to their sturdy construction and the desert climate, they look like they were built yesterday, and are just waiting for someone to come by and stoke the flames again.
When I think of solitude on the road, I’ll admit the last place I’d associate with it is Zion National Park. In the twenty years that had passed since I first visited the park (when it was a sleepy secret), word had definitely gotten out. Nowadays Zion is a lot like the Grand Canyon: there are so many visitors that you can no longer drive the park road in your own car for most of the year, and forget any hope of a solitary moment. On my most recent visit, it worked out that I was there during spring break week for most of Utah’s colleges and universities—needless to say, I rubbed shoulders (literally! The shuttle bus was packed!) with a whole lotta fresh-faced students that day. But a kind park ranger gave me a great tip: she told me that if I wanted to escape the crowds, I should try Zion’s lesser-known sister site: the Kolob Canyons Unit, just forty miles to the northwest.
Reader, she was right. There was nobody there. Not one soul, save the ranger manning the lonely visitor center. So while the hordes teemed in Zion Canyon, I had this view all to myself. It felt like winning a trophy for braving the crowd earlier.
Well, it wasn’t the Loneliest Road, but I certainly had a lonely-road solo drive on the day before I crossed Nevada. I was in southeastern Utah, and I wanted to tick another highway off my road-trip bucket list: State Route 12, which cuts through part of the mostly-wilderness, sprawling, painted-desert expanse of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The highway itself, completed in 1940 by CCC road builders, is legendary—but because of its remote location, I had never managed to get there on one of my previous Southwest trips.
I knew the drive would have spectacular scenery,
and the squiggles on the map promised a fun challenge of curving blacktop.
And I’ve done enough winding desert drives in the Southwest to expect surprises along the way—
—but the road pulled a few fast ones on me, all the same.
I rounded a blind curve to find this fella standing calmly on the yellow line. I screeched to a halt (and thus vindicated myself for sticking to the speed limit), stopping just a foot or two from him, and he didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even move—he made me go around to continue on my way, while he stared me down.
Still, once my heart rate returned to normal, I tried to remind myself that maybe he wasn’t interrupting my solo road trip—maybe I was interrupting his.
If you’re looking for a truly solo road trip experience, look no farther than the Loneliest Road: US Highway 50, where it crosses Nevada. The mostly two-lane road traverses the Great Basin desert, which consists of basin-and-range topography: wide, flat, parched valleys punctuated by parallel mountain ranges.
I wasn’t alone for the whole trip; the secret is definitely out about the Loneliest Road (thanks to Nevada tourism plugging it as a destination all its own), and there were other lookie-loos like me, as well as the occasional long-haul trucker. But because of the geography, what that translated to was little knots of traffic stuck behind trucks on the mountain passes, and then long, long stretches of empty road, like in the above drawing.
I lost count of the number of historic barns and rusted vintage pickups along the way, but that wasn’t unexpected…
What I didn’t expect was having so much roadside reading material! I love documenting my trips through found signage, but I think this place set a record for the most verbage in one, otherwise empty, place.
Though parts of the world are beginning to open back up, travel is still something we’re all doing from the comfort of our armchairs right now (and besides, I am firmly in camp #StayHome for those of us who can, to help others who can’t). So lately I’ve been remembering one of my all-time favorite sketchbook subjects: doors, gates, and courtyards. And this drawing seems to sum up all three.
What I love about drawing a door, other than its own inherent aesthetic qualities, is the fact that it represents a question: what’s on the other side? Long ago I lived in Rome, a city chock full of hidden courtyards and walled gardens—though I spent a whole year wandering (and sketching) every street and back alley, I only ever got to see a fraction of what lay inside the doors that faced the street. It felt like there was a whole separate city behind those doors, and every time I was afforded a glimpse of it, I was thrilled. I’ve felt the same feeling in a few places here in the States—namely Santa Fe and New Orleans—and when I sketched the above drawing, that feeling hit me with full force again. I’ll probably never get to see the inside of this little walled garden, but that doesn’t matter: with the orange trees and bougainvillea spilling over the stucco, it’s enough to imagine the little world that lies on the other side of the door.
I visited Saguaro National Park for the first time last year, and between being a veteran national parks tourist and seeing a zillion photos of the place over the years, I thought I knew what to expect. Aaaand of course, I was way wrong. (No surprise there.)
For one thing, Mary-Alice and I arrived in the middle of a storm. No stereotypical desert scenes for me that day; instead, I got to add something far more dramatic to the ol’ sketchbook.
For another, I knew the park was quite close to the city of Tucson, but I didn’t know it was comprised of two distinct districts (Rincon Mountain and Tucson Mountain), each flanking the city from opposite sides. There wasn’t enough time to do both units in one afternoon, so we rearranged our schedule for the next day in order to fit in a tour of the western district.
Finally, I was shocked to discover that the place reminded me strongly of my home turf of the Pacific Northwest—at least, a bizarre, parallel-universe version thereof. It wasn’t just that the saguaros are incredibly tall. It was that there were so many of them, thick on the ground like the familiar conifer forests of Washington. Add to that the indigo hillsides I’d seen the night before, and the nebulous mists of that morning, and it was like standing in a dream-land version of home.
On our way up to the Grand Canyon for our second day at the park, the Tailor and I decided to swing through a trio of national monuments located a short detour away, just outside of Flagstaff, AZ. Since what is arguably the most famous national park lies just down the road, these sites tend to get overshadowed a bit. Yet all are worth a stop, and all are closely linked to one another.
First up is Sunset Crater National Monument, a volcanic cinder cone and a landscape painter’s dream. The name, coined by John Wesley Powell, comes from the subtle gradation of reds and purples within the volcanic rock. Combined with the surrounding meadows that bloomed with wildflowers while we were there, the effect was stunning.
On the other side of Flagstaff lies Walnut Canyon National Monument. At first glance, this place appears to have little in common with Sunset Crater, but in fact the two are intrinsically connected. The people of the Sinagua culture had been living above the canyon rim since about the year 600, but after Sunset Crater erupted in about the year 1100, the population near the canyon grew rapidly as people fled the volcano. After that, the Sinagua began to settle inside the canyon itself, constructing cleverly-hidden cliff dwellings up and down the canyon’s walls (there are three sketched out in the drawing above—can you spot them?).
I’ve saved the best for last: Wupatki National Monument. This site is located just a few miles north of Sunset Crater, and preserves entire pueblos built by the Sinagua. This sandstone city was built following the eruption of the cinder cone, after the deposit of volcanic ash made the area’s soil much more fertile. The Wupatki pueblo, pictured here, is the largest settlement within the national monument—this one apartment-building-like structure had 100 rooms and housed up to a hundred people (the entire settled region had several thousand Sinagua inhabitants).
I’ve visited a lot of the ancient pueblo ruins of the Southwest, and I’m always drawn to the sophisticated architecture of each one. But so far I haven’t seen anything that provides as clear a picture of what life must have been like then as this place does. Walking through Wupatki really feels like one is trespassing through someone’s house—someone who might just return at any moment.
Of course, with all this talk of national parks, leaving out the crown jewel of the Park Service would be downright criminal. But until last summer, I’d never been to the Grand Canyon.
When I finally go there, I did my best to remedy the heck out of the situation. And the weather did its best to oblige me—in just two short days I feel like I got to see the Canyon in an incredibly broad variety of moods and colors.
Actually, sketching there sort of broke my brain. Not only is it easy to fall into the trap of trying to document every minute detail, but the light also seems to change every few seconds. I’d look for a bit, mix up some paint, and then look again to find the colors and shadows completely different than just a moment ago.
So whenever the grandeur threatened to overwhelm me, I shifted my focus to my fellow tourists (including the four-legged ones).
To tell the truth, I found the tourist trade every bit as fascinating as the canyon itself—especially since it goes back a long, long way. The Grand Canyon might be the most well-known national park, but it was far from the first. And that’s because well over a century ago, commercial interests fought long and hard to keep the canyon private to maximize profits—hard to imagine, considering the number of tourists who flock there today. But those early tourist traps are now preserved right alongside the rocks themselves—and I was just as eager to sketch them as the vistas.
Still, nothing beats nature for a spectacle. I was one of hundreds lined up on the cliff’s edge this night, but as soon as the sky turned pink I forgot all about my fellow tourists. Seeing something that vast, paradoxically, has a way of shrinking the whole world into a pinpoint of a moment—one that’s every bit as personal as it is universal.
This post is part of an ongoing series called 66 Fridays, which explores the wonders of old Route 66. Click on the preceding “66 Fridays” link to view all posts in the series, or visit the initial overview post here.
The last post was a big fat tribute to the National Park Service, which celebrated its centennial yesterday. So it’s only fitting to spend today telling you about Petrified Forest National Park, which is the exact center of the Venn Diagram between the national parks and Route 66. In fact, it’s the only national park to contain a section of the original Mother Road.
Of course, even if you didn’t know anything about Route 66, Petrified Forest is still infinitely worth visiting. There is the namesake petrified wood, of course, but it’s the landscapes that touched this artist’s soul.
Around every bend in the road was some new desert vista, each one vastly different than the one before. And with every passing cloud the light changed, essentially remaking the land in a totally new image, all within minutes.
And just when you’ve all but forgotten what brought you here, you crest a hill and see a telltale line of telephone poles, still marching westward to the horizon.
Mt. Rainier National Park, WA
Tomorrow is the 100th birthday of the National Park Service. All of America seems to be celebrating right now, and rightly so. In my opinion, our wildest pockets are our true national treasures, and our national parks, as Wallace Stegner said, our best idea.
Olympic National Park, WA
So since I’ve spent a good chunk of my sketching life in national parks both close to home…
Arches National Park, UT
…and far afield…
Crater Lake National Park, OR
I figured I’d add my voice to the celebratory din, in the form of a little sketchbook retrospective.
Badlands National Park, SD
Beyond the centennial itself, I’m always up for toasting the parks. Not only do I think park rangers are the best people on earth,
Redwood National Park, CA
but I also sometimes think they’re the only thing standing between wildness and destruction.
Carlsbad Caverns National Park, NM
And anyway, I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m a total park nut myself. It’s my goal to visit every NPS property before I die, including national parks, historic sites, national monuments, everything. (Actually, I’ve crossed a goodly chunk of them off the list already—
Guadalupe Mountains National Park, TX
—and I even have the stamps to prove it.)
Olympic National Park, WA
I know I have a long path ahead of me before I reach that goal,
Grand Canyon National Park, AZ
and getting there won’t be easy.
Big Bend National Park, TX
Yet I can’t tell you how grateful I am that the opportunity exists in the first place—
Rocky Mountain National Park, CO
that so many people have fought to preserve these wild places, and won.
Saguaro National Park, AZ
Best of all is the feeling that no matter how long it might take me to get to each park with my sketchbook,
Glacier National Park, MT
I know it’ll be there waiting for me, as close to unchanged as humanly possible. Thanks to the National Park Service, the window of opportunity remains open.
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