Greyhills Inn, Tuba City, AZ, 11:41 p.m.

This is a hospitality training school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is one of three hotels in this tiny town on the Hopi/Navajo reservation. The other cheap one in town, Dine Motel, was full. The Quality Inn was requiring $90 a room. Ninety dollars!

I figure, the folks at this location know travellers are stuck between Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon, with only a handful of motels to accomodate them within about 80 miles. The reservation isn't exactly first world, so a lot of folks will shell out the dough to stay in a middle-class oasis. But even the cheap hotels are marked up. The demand is just too high.

So we're here for $50. It's a school. It looks like one from the outside except for the open sign in the window. Our dorm room is dressed up like a hotel room. The bathrooms still look like dorm showers, though, much to Andrew's chagrin.

We can't dial into Earthlink out here; everywhere is long distance.

We've been watching Phoenix late-night news, purveyors of facile sensationalism. News is so slow, or TV competition so fierce, that even old murders are recast with updates. Makes it sound like it's not safe to go out at night.

Maybe old guys would grope you if you went out alone, which is what just happened to me when I went out to use the "hotel's" computer. A boatload of Russian tourists checked in and their geriatric leader happened to be walking back to the rooms at the same time I was. He sidled up, wrapped his arm around me, and asked me if I would go back to his room. Blech! Creep.

A lot is going on. We got a crazy sniper back east, Congress granting Bush power to wage war. Gma's on my mind a lot during the long, silent stretches of road. The "never agains" collecting at my chin: no more Scrabble, no more of her laugh, no more blazing-blue eyes, just no more opportunities. And all the stuff waiting for me at home inveigles its way into worries, too.

Today we hiked in Arches, out the end to the Devil's Garden. I wanted to be close to the tall, cool rock. It felt great to be off the road.

Afterward, we returned to Banditos for lunch, then hit the road for Monument Valley. We arrived at sunset to oohs and aahs, to scenery I've never seen in real life. This is the famous stretch in the movies, and once you see it, you see the place makes no sense in the movies that use it.

Shortly after, at dusk, we saw an awful accident. An oncoming truck hit a donkey on the highway. We were the first in front of the truck, besides a car that swerved to miss the animal initially. We braked hard and slid off the road to avoid involvement. The collision is still vivid: the silhouette of the donkey in the headlights and then the body collapsing and flying into the next lane. The truck, its front end obliterated, screeched to halt, smoke gathering from its tires and radiator. The poor donkey lay in the road, in shock, trying to rise on broken legs. The poor little animal alone out there and the headlights piling up behind the scene. The donkey did manage to stand, its right foreleg hanging pendulously, before it hopped off to the side of the road and collapsed. Everyone was in shock, and, at first, no one moved. All the cars were stopped, but no one got out. Then three women jumped out of one of the cars and rushed to the donkey, petting and comforting it. I am so glad they were with the donkey; the thought of the animal in shock and pain and in such unfamiliar circumstances is heart rending. It was the most horrible thing I've seen happen.

We saw a sheriff shoot an injured deer by the side of the road the other day. Driving out here, you see all kinds of carnage and the bloodstains that keep long after. The cops will tell you to slow down because of the animals crossing the road, and you think it'll never happen to you. I guess they shoot more injured animals than they ever thought they would being officers. And we're all smokers—just thoughtless.