Day 5: Bryce to Lake Powell

Get straight up, drive into Bryce Canyon National Park, hike 2.2 miles, a nice hike - feels good to straighten out flattened ass, get great pictures, drive 2.5 hours down dirt road toward Lake Powell, this is my suggestion, I feel I am getting better at dealing with the map. Dirt Road Driving is so fun. It is so much better being out in the middle of nowhere, barrelling down a dusty road, alone. We get a lot of pictures, stop at Grosvenor Arch, go straight to Lake Powell store, get beer, sunscreen and combos, drive 45 minutes into middle of nowhere on way bumpy 4WD road in our sedan to amazing mars/moon-like spot in canyon. Set up camp and eat mushrooms. Guy tells me I'm beautiful. When he says this I get shy, I stick my tongue out, I tell him, "I'm licking the sky." We take pictures of rock formations lit by colored glow sticks and remote controlled car headlights. We're entertained for hours, we eat, we go to bed. It's my favorite night so far. So fun. So alone. Incredible, truly relaxing. No paranoia of wild animals or drunk morons, there aren't even any bugs.

We realize here for the 2nd time, that silence is what scares us, just like on the mesa ouside of Zion. We are looking for bugs/people/animals to impede on our space and threaten us. Because this is our second night like this, we are more at peace with peace. We can accept that we are our only enemies. Like what guy told me at the beginning of the trip, "You know what's so cool? We can do anything we want, as long as we don't kill ourselves." It's like when we're at home, in the city, we have so many threatening agents around us all the time and we are so busy protecting ourselves from Them, we forget to see ourselves as a possible threat, like cancer, the silent killer, which is indeed what power we have against ourselves. Here, it is different.

We have only ourselves to look at and look out for.