In the afternoon, I popped out to Organic Orbit, my new favorite lunch spot. I got power pesto and wild rice and chicken salads and, for the first time, a Tropical Source Red Raspberry Crush chocolate bar, which I have before only sampled. I got a mocha frappucino from Starbucks then returned to Dot Org to deal with the last, pre-vacation stuff.

After RDC picked me up, but I don't think because of the condition of the car, I had Crowded House in my head. We drove off into foothills with clouds clinging to them, through mudslides stripping the hillsides above Georgetown, past a pee-and-snack stop in Dillon, and rocketed through Glenwood Canyon. After Vail, it'd be downhill most of the way--good to be free of the smell of trucks' burning brakes. Denver, Colorado to Green River, Utah, 350 miles, 5:20 (with stops).

Before we got to Dillon, we talked again of the car's name. It was certainly not Ripple. Perhaps, RDC said, if he heard Reckoning he'd be inspired. And so he was: Cassidy. See the U-S-A in your Cass-id-ay. I have to have Banzai in the car; RDC needs to drive cars named with Grateful Dead lyrics. Cassidy it was, and I poured a libation onto the dashboard. Probably despite Banzai's presence it would have been unlucky to embark on this journey in an unnamed car.

I haven't been west of Vail since last May, when we hurtled through Glenwood Canyon on the way to Grand Canyon. It was so beautiful. I forget, living here, how beautiful it all really is, Eagle and Pitkin counties, and then Glenwood Springs.

I have seldom been through the canyon in daylight. When we went to Aspen often, in the fall and winter of 1995-96, darkness would have fallen by the time we reached it; when we went in the summer with later daylight, we'd go by way of Independence Pass, bypassing the canyon altogether. And when I'd leave Aspen on late Sunday afternoons, if it was still daylight, well, I guess the lower eastbound side (the highway is split and stacked in along its narrow stretches) doesn't give as good a view, particularly to the driver.

The highway twists and turns as dramatically as the river it follows through the canyon. Cliffs and spires only dozens of inches wide and looking thin as knifeblades tower above. As unforgettable as the canyon is, I felt as if I'd never seen it before.

Last May, going to the Grand Canyon was the first time I had been west of Glenwood Springs at all--always before I'd turned south there for Aspen. This was my second time. Last May I said we should have launched the Terrapin into the river like Chitty-chitty-bang-bang and just followed the river, waterfalls rapids and all, from one canyon to the next. This time we were headed north. We passed the bat cliffs near the western border of Colorado (but saw no bats), saw the toes of the Palisades (a rock formation allegedly called "hoodedoos" (which I can't find in the dictionary under any likely spelling, so RDC might be pulling my leg) that look like toes of the mountain monsters to me), passed through Grand Junction, and found ourselves in the Middle of Nowhere, Utah.

For the second time we neglected to take a photograph of this sign: Eagles on Highway. I am convinced that signs can make the best photographs of a trip, or at least the roadtrip segments thereof. Friends of ours took a photograph by a trout stream in Yellowstone of a sign admonishing fisherfolk that the fish are "Catch and Release Only." What makes it a great photograph is that grazing next to the sign is a large bison.

Almost as soon as you're in Utah, you're on ocean floor. Or just before leaving Colorado. Anyway, Colorado is ocean floor too, but longer ago and less obviously so. Utah still looks like ocean floor, and not just at the Great Salt Lake. Contemplating the journeys of U.S. settlers, whole families crossing the acrid plains with livestock and lives in tow, is sobering. Ten to twenty miles a day compared to our air-conditioned 80 miles an hour.

At 9:30, we pulled into the Motel 6 in Green River, Utah. When my body still felt like it was traveling and I couldn't drift off to sleep, instead of counting sheep I thought about what Milo thought about to get himself out of the Doldrums: of birds that swim and fish that fly, yesterday's lunch and tomorrow's dinner, of words that begin with J and numbers that end in 3. I guess I did fall asleep before thinking of the many detours and wrong turns that were so easy to take, of how fine it is to be moving along, and, most of all, of how much can be accomplished with just a little thought. But no dog with his nose in the wind, just sat back watchfully ticking beside me. RDC doesn't even snore. Sigh.