Down in the Canyon - Travel Day

lSunday morning, April 13th . . .  Sedona, AZ

Travelled yesterday from Bethel, VT to Lebanon, NH to Boston, MA to Phoenix, AZ to Sedona, AZ for a grand total of 14 hours.  Arrived at our simple but comfy motel at 11 PM local time, 2 AM body time.  When I mentioned to Liam that we used a car, bus, plane, bus (rental car shuttle at the PHX airport), and a car to accomplish all this, he noted that it was a palindrome and an example of a "mass scale."  When pressed for more thoughts about this, he explained that the vehicles first increased then decreased in mass.   Sometimes, he really uses that old noggin' . . . 

The Arizona scenery was muted by darkness last night though Beth and Liam insisted they could make out cactus whizzing by on the roadside; I was both skeptical and envious as the driver.  But this morning we woke up to a brilliant blue sky and a remarkable outcropping of rock whose perfectly horizontal layers suggest a rapid upheaval in the distant past. 

The image above is from the Great American Things website but captures Sedona in the foreground and the fantastic outcropping in the mid-ground. I'm just getting my bearings here but I'm pretty sure the outcropping shown here is what I'm seeing from our motel . . . I'll take some photos and compare later.

I wonder how often we will witness the ideas of deep time clashing with the local preference for Biblical insight into nature.  It seems counter-intuitive that residents of this testimony to deep-time natural history could, in such significant numbers, be convinced of an Earth that is no older than 6000 years.  

Then there's this . . . . as I went looking for a great Sedona image to share with you, I came across this image of the Holy Cross chapel:

I have no idea of the exact leanings of this partcular church, but the image of this structure, literally wedged into natural history and propped up on geology made me smile.