Illness, Beauty and Almost....Sudden Death....

Well, I am in Moab, Utah.....perched 5 miles from Arches National Park which I will drive to tomorrow morning at 5:15 am to see the sunrise.

I feel like I've been traveling for weeks but it's only been two days.

Tuesday night I was all packed ....sat back and watched some TV....and went to bed ready to rise and pack and hit the road.

At 1:36am....my stomach woke me up. It felt like it was wiggling inside me....it was making awful noises. I got up took an antacid but had to do the ol' sudden dash back to the bathroom....where I quickly genuflected to the toilet bowl.....and hugged it for the next 10 minutes or so....violently vomiting.

What hit me? Was it the trail mix I snacked on before bed? Did I get food poisoning from something I ate during the day. I didn't have much time to think.....because wave after of wave of stomach trouble hit me....and the toilet bowl and I became best friends. Finally around 5am....just 90 minutes before I was supposed to rise....I feel asleep.

I woke when my hub's alarm clock rang....and he advised me to sleep in and change my plans. No one should expect to drive 780 miles on two hours sleep and an uncertain stomach. But what could I do? Our whole vacation plan.....rested on me being in Salt Lake City in a few days to pick him up.....and how was I supposed to magically transport myself from here to there?

So I gingerly grabbed a Dr. Pepper....and a banana and a coke.....and took a deep breath and hoisted myself into the big rental SUV. It is a big ol' thing with very comfortable seats....so I turned on the A/C into the frigid zone.....and headed down to the interstate and turned West.

I tried not to think about my stomach.....or if I needed to go to the bathroom....and then decided....hell I crossed the Sahara desert and pee-ed and shit in the desert....if need be I could pull over onto some off road and relief myself.....if it came down to it.

Comforted that I had the worse case scenario taken care of.....I drove all the way into New Mexico.....very tired....but I was where I was supposed to be.....I got the room key....opened the door....crawled into bed and went to sleep till the next morning.

This morning I felt good.....I took a few bites of food....a tiny sip of coffee.....and hit the road in New Mexico headed for Moab. Google gave me two choices and I decided to go through Albuquerque and then north and then northwest.

It was a wonderful choice....the road I was on....was traveled enough so I didn't feel alone or anxious....and isolated enough that I could enjoy the spectacular sites of the back side of the Santa Fe mountains. I never turned on the radio......or plugged an audio book in.....or distracted myself in any way from the wonder of this road......headed through the high desert at 7000 feet.

And then with little warning.....the desert turned industrial.....oil rigs, trucks, tanks of all sorts sprouting up from the floor and some mining off in the distance.....from beauty to work horse and not a pretty animal either. For some reason, I felt a little uncomfortable....going through these towns. I realized it was silly.....I have traveled thousands of miles solo....but the massive trucks and equipment and the feel of being in a male industrialized environment had me wishing I had a sidekick.

I stopped for gas in a town called Farmington....and used my IPhone to check my route....it said turn and go up the next road.....which I did.....it wasn't until I hit the sign which said welcome to Colorado.....that I flinched....what the hell was I doing in Colorado? I was supposed to be in New Mexico and Utah? I pulled over and realized my IPhone map had taken me up a road that was east of where I wanted to be......but it was salvageable....I could turn up ahead and only be off 20 miles or so.

So I relaxed....and I was so rewarded but some of the most gorgeous country I had ever driven through.....a combination of mountains and desert and sage and ranch and pine land. The road went up and down and curved this way and that....hugged a valley bottom and emerged in high country again. It was amazing......and all the time I was driving I kept wondering who lived in these ranches that dotted the landscape....who lived in the trailers....the tidy houses....the dilapidated dumps scattered here and there? Where were they from? How did they get out here...in such a remote area? Did they live and die here? Where did men meet the women to marry and bring out here? The number of geraniums and flower planters surely indicated this was an area populated by men and women.

There was no clue.

I wondered too.....if you lived out here.....were you worried about the debt ceiling? Did you care what was going on in Washington?.....Did the war in Iraq or Afghanistan mean anything to you? Because every morning when you walked out your front door.....you had a stunning vista of plains and mountains and desert....you could see for a 100 miles.....and in so doing....did any of these Nightly News Things worry or bother you? Or was the landscape so big....that you became big.....and your soul expanded and the trifles that city people worried about....seemed quaint but not important.

Again there was no clue...no answer.......there were just men and women passing me by in pickups and SUVs and trucks.

By late afternoon...I was back on my original road.....and overjoyed that I was only 30 miles from Moab.....my neck was stiff....my butt felt flat.....my shoulder hurt and I had put on 1300 miles in two days. I smiled when I saw the first sandstone formation and pulled off the road with all the other tourists....to take a picture of the "Cupcake/Tit."

I was disappointed my camera battery was not holding out.....and had to use my cell phone instead of my camera. I was enjoying the scenery....now about 2o miles to Moab....when all of a sudden a white car in the opposite lane.....moving fast....(the speed limit was 70) quickly drifted into my lane and was now headed straight towards me. There was a second of disbelief....and then I looked right....thinking I would drive off the road.....and gasped because in this section of the highway there was a drop off of a couple of feet after the shoulder.

The car was headed straight for me....a truck was ahead of her and blocked my exit off to the left.....I hit the brakes.....and turned into the shoulder trying not to go off the edge....I also hit my horn......the woman must of fallen asleep and woke up.....because she turned her car and passed by side mirror by inches. I could see she was an elderly women, in a white blouse, wearing bifocals....that's how close she was.

My heart was in my throat.....and I turned back onto the highway.....the car behind me was a log way off. I couldn't believe I escaped the crash......I couldn't believe how in seconds....this car drifted and then sped right towards me.....I couldn't believe how the flat desert changed in this particular section to a place with a drop off.... which meant I would have rolled instead of sailed across land beyond the shoulder.

About 15 minutes later I sat down in front of the information center in Moab and started to cry. I don't know why....I was alright.....things had worked out well...but I was all teary eyed....and drained.

I drove down the street to my hotel.....feeling a bit alien.....wondering what the hell I was doing in Utah. Every car coming towards me looked menacing.....a big truck driving a bit over the line....made me swerve towards the right.

Steady girl....I thought.....it could have happened but it didn't.

Move on. Tomorrow.....a drive into the National Park....with small hikes....and lots of picture taking.

Move on.