I knew I should've taken that left turn at Albuquerque

It's great doing this thing by myself, but it's also great doing it with a friend. I picked up my friend T from the airport in Albuquerque in Sunday. She's flown out from NYC for the week to accompany me to Utah, the Grand Canyon and Vegas. The situation is rife with opportunity to get on each other's nerves, but so far it's been a blast. While my valuable passenger seat real estate has been usurped, I now have someone to hand me things from the backseat and be my co-navigator. And let me tell you, that car is now loaded for bear. Good thing I got upgraded to the midsize, because I'm not sure we could fit anything else in. My packing skills have been put to the test (and have still passed with flying colors, don't worry. I am the packing MASTER).

Sunday was a beautiful day for it, hot and dry and not a cloud in the sky. She needed it, coming from rain-soaked NYC. We wandered around Old Town Albuquerque for a while, but spent the rest of the day in the hotel room chilling. I had seen Petroglyph National Monument earlier in the day. Monday we got up early and drove to Four Corners and Monument Valley.

Now, I thought I grew up in the middle of nowhere. But I didn't know nothin' about the middle of nowhere. Four Corners and Monument Valley really are in the middle of nowhere. I have never been anywhere so remote. It's hard to believe we were still in the US, and even harder to believe that such touristy destinations would be completely off the map of civilization. And that there could be so much dirt, and so little green, and so much nothing anywhere.

Part of that is because both destinations are within tribal grounds and are run by the Navajo, not by the US government. The Navajo have no desire to build up the land, so between the time we left Shiprock, NM (which, trust me, would not in any other circumstances be considered civilization) and the time we hit Moah, UT, we didn't pass anything that could rightly be considered a town. Every once in a while there would be a gas station, but we would often drive for an hour or more between those, on two-lane highways mostly devoid of traffic. No RVs or tractor trailers. No restaurants or bars, no fast food, no banks, not even billboards. I wasn't aware there was any stretch of highway left in America that hadn't been blighted by McDonald's and the promise of more McDonald's, but I've now found several.

The great thing about being so remote is that I could drive completely unemcumbered. No one in front of me, no one behind me, and while the roads were terrible, the landscape changed often enough to keep us highly entertained. Four Corners is just that--the spot where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet--and is essentially a medallion set into the middle of nothing. Dusty brown dirt, gravel, rocks and mountains. As we passed into Arizona and got closer to Monument Valley, the brown dirt and rocks changed to red dust and rocks. Which doesn't sound exciting, but coming from the green and lush East Coast, we felt like we were on Mars.

Admittedly, Monument Valley is pretty spectacular. And because it's on tribal lands, it's blessedly free of billboards, fast food restaurants, and tacky gift shops. Just desert and high, lonely rocks for as far as the eye can see. I kept feeling like I was in a movie, which is understandable, because the monuments and the road that leads up to them have been in so many. There's a hotel that overlooks the valley (called, appropriately enough, The View Hotel). Because Navajo land is technically a dry county, there was no alcohol to be had. It was a shame, because that view cried out for a great bar and a cold beer.

We stayed at a campground nearby (the only one), and while we had a great time, we decided the next morning that we'd seen and been covered in enough red dirt to last us the rest of our lives. Not only was Tameka the only black person in a 400-mile radius, we were the only Americans in the campgrounds. Everyone else was either French or German. It reminded me of that "Simpsons" episode in which Homer briefly turns his house into a hostel, and Bart's room gets filled with Germans complaining about how Americans don't appreciate their national park system.

So then we got up and drove to two national parks...