They have names for every gulch, canyon and butte so we added a few more

One of his colleagues asked if John Powell thought there were any trout in the contributory river, to which he said “no, it is a dirty devil”. So we have the Dirty Devil River. That made us wonder if we could spawn a name and how easy it was to do so back in those days.

The inhabitants of the former village of Hite were convinced there was uranium in “dem dere hills” and became so obsessed, it was said they had “uranium on the cranium”.

We journeyed on, alongside Glen Canyon. It was quite staggering – almost an overload of scenery.

Talking about coining names, they name the odd butte or rock formations, such as the Cheesebox Rock, or the Mexican Hat. We even passed a Lazy T Ranch, with the T lying on its side, like a pick.

We passed one set of sandstone cliffs, which we named the Gorgonzola Cliffs because it was covered in holes. Then we saw a large dark rock that looked like a factory with windows. Also a massive fish with gaping mouth, all shapes cast by the glaciers.

As we headed down to Hanksville (which if you blinked you might miss), I saw a rock that looked like a penis. That sparked an hour or so of naming various rocks, buttes and canyons, much of unrepeatable, but as the game gathered momentum, we passed a very narrow, short canyon leading off the road. Ellie came up with the name Nun’s Chuff Gulch and I felt I would be unable to top that.

Once again, while we knew we would be impressed by Glen Canyon, our trip was aimed at Bryce Canyon, but the scenery en route is just amazing, and so vast.

Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon are surrealist works of nature, as if Salvador Dali submitted the designs for the Creator to implement. But the whole area “Canyon-lands” is absolutely stunning.

Awesome is very over-used in the US but this area is just that.

Every single rock formation, glacially-traumatised cliff and valley floor is there. A geologist’s and a mountaineer’s dream, yet we were a bit off the main beaten tourist track, and still amazed.

Eventually we started climbing through the Dixie Forest, which set us thinking about Dixie and our dogs. We worked through Aspen of all colours, orange, yellow and green, plus Spruce and Ponderosa Pines plus Gamble Oaks.

We rose to 9,600 feet in the forest and met sleeting snow. We remembered the previous year when Bear Tooth Pass took us over 11,000 feet – far higher than the famed Machu Picchu- where you are told you need to have training before climbing. Not these old codgers – we just shake a lot as we drive.

We recalled that when travelling up from Durango to Silverton by road or rail, the temperature can drop by 30 degrees or more. It was similarly quite chilly and the shorts donned in Monument Valley now seemed out of place. Then came mists, but it cleared as we headed down and the snow stopped. We saw a sign that pointed to Hell’s Backbone, and thought we would give that road a miss. Little did we know that Hell's Backbone would have been the less worrying route. Who would have thought of that?

Then we came out upon another extraordinary vista as I glanced to the right. Ellie commented to the effect it was amazing but her comment trailed off because she had spotted that there was a sheer drop to the right, and another extraordinary vista to the left and a sheer drop.

We were on a ridge some 15 yards wide, with a precipice either side. I re-discovered the pinch marks on the steering wheel and slowly we descended, often around hairpin bends.

At one look-out, Ellie got out to try and capture the moment on camera. Apparently we were on the Million-Dollar Highway, so nicknamed after the cost of the operation.

I named it Sphincter Stress Pass.

There are a lot of Indian, hyphenated names to be seen such as Shin-ta-yi-ga and Oke-wi-me. Ellie, remembering the code talkers, had tried to see a pattern to them.

However, she informed me the Indian name for the pass we had just crossed over was Eye’ve-kakt-m’eye-pan-tz.

It seems there is no stopping her.

With some relief we pulled into Escalante, our target for the day having travelled through Primitive Lands, White Canyon, the north of Glen Canyon, The Dixie Forest and Canyon Reef Park (the last part of the USA to be mapped and with good reason) and Capital Reef before dropping anchor amidst more surrealist scenery (and apart from the petrol, there were no charges).

“Howja get on with the road,” inquired the man at the motel?

He smiled at my reaction. “It’s called the Hog’s back.”

I suggested that hogs were fat and had fat backs. He then informed me that the route we took was worse than Hell’s Backbone. The only thing really scary about that is the bridge connecting two canyons, apparently.

We took his word for that.

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