11 Kids, 1 Bus and the 4 Corners: Misadventures in the American Southwest

The sun was still bright in the sky as our bus passed the city limit of Mexican Hat, Utah, a remote desert settlement named as such due to an unusual rock formation that vaguely resembles a sombrero. We had been stranded there in a gas station for nearly two hours, passing the time by staring at the great beige mesas that threatened to topple over onto the town of less than 1,000 souls while our adult chaperones googled "how to fix an overheated bus engine" with visibly restrained frustration. Taking a left, we rounded a butte and found ourselves on a cracked and lonely desert road flanked on the right by bare and jagged rock mounds and miles of open desert on the left. There was not a single speck of green as far as the eye could see. For the two hours that we drove in that stifling heat not once did we see even a measly cactus to liven up the monotony of that endless sea of rock and sand. I was beginning to feel quite irritable seeing as how we seemed to be in the absolute middle of nowhere, everyone stank from not have showered in three days and no one had any idea where we were going. As the sun began to set, we entered a flat valley that descended slightly as we drove. The setting sun turned the beige rock martian red, as if its rays were slowly rusting the ancient terrain into a hellish landscape that cast long menacing shadows along the ground and made the wind moan in the distance. By the time we arrived at our "camp site," I was thoroughly exhausted and convinced that we would at any second be attacked by a band of marauding desert dwellers or else die there of thirst, insanity or a combination there of. The state of our "bathroom," which consisted of a hole in the ground inside a dilapidated cinderblock shack, did not exactly cheer my spirits. Then I turned around and beheld one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever witnessed. About 100 meters below our campsite wound a stretch of liquid silver, lazily making its way around multi-layered sandstone outcroppings that waters before it spent thousands of years cutting, shaping and smoothing. The last light from the disappearing sun was receding beneath the horizon, leaving in its wake a sky wet with gentle purple criss-crossed by streaks of baby blue and white wisps of cloud. I'd never seen a desert before, and despite wanting nothing more than a hot shower, I stood in awe of that vast emptiness as my mind tried to capture its fleeting image in the dying golden sunlight.