Flagstaff offers another few moments in the high country of pine forest, situated as it is on the slopes of the towering San Francisco Peaks, but we have only begun our journey and we head north, leaving the I-40 and taking US 89 toward the canyon lands that are part of the vast plateau region of rock and sand that includes northwestern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, northern Arizona and southern Utah. Of all the places in the inter-mountain west these offer the most expansive and everchanging scenes of earth and sky.

Tuesday, June 29, was a particularly clear and beautiful day to be traveling through northern Arizona. This is the view as we topped the high point on US 89 near Sunset Crater, just out of Flagstaff and head downward, out of the pines and onto the great plateau towards Navaho Bridge on the Colorado, the Vermilion Cliffs and Marble Canyon.