Font's Point — The Grand Canyon of the Desert

This is the turnoff for Font's Point, and people call what's out there the Grand Canyon of the desert. I want to be straight with you, because the road sheet is blunt about it: the overlook itself sits four miles south of here, and every foot of that four miles is soft sand wash. It's four-wheel-drive, high-clearance only — and even then, folks get stuck. Trucks air down their tires and still bog out; the most recent reports have 4x4s digging themselves into the S-curves. So unless you've got the right rig under you and the sand's been dry a good while, this is where the view lives — right here at the gateway, not out at the rim. So let me hand you the rim anyway. Picture the pavement falling away and the earth tearing open into a maze — ridge after ridge of bare mudstone, raw tan and rose and grey, folded and gullied and stripped down to bone, dropping away to the south with nothing green in it at all. At sunset the low light pours sideways into all those folds and the whole badlands catches fire, every ridge throwing a long shadow. If you've got the vehicle and the nerve, it is hands-down the greatest view in this park. And if you don't — no shame in it — you've stood at the gate of it, and now you can see it just fine in your mind.