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Entry for Thursday, 10/28
Nice night sleeping in the wilderness - the moon was so bright it woke me when it came up.
When I got up, it was 19 degrees and well before dawn.  I'd planned to make coffee and hang out a bit, but I just jumped in the truck and started driving. It worked out well, by the time the sun was coming up I was in another picturesque area.
I did some more map research - the Four Corners make it kind of tough, there are four maps to coordinate to plan a route.  Monument Valley sounded like what I was looking for, on the Utah - Arizona border.
I'd guessed right - it had the spectacular rock formations and views I was hoping to find - like the background of a Roadrunner cartoon.

 There was a sort of road running back behind the balanced rock formation, overlooking a creek and a lot of hills.  Nice place to have breakfast.

From there I headed east - Kayenta, AZ was my furthest point west.  I considered going further, the Grand Canyon isn't all that far, but better not to overdo it - I have to be home by Sunday.

It's a great area to drive.  very sparsely populated, magnificent scenery, easy to pull off the road and wander wherever you like.
I went through Shiprock, which sadly is hazy and eye-watering from the giant coal fired power plants in the area.

Continuing east, I drove through the northern edge of New Mexico.  The land was what I would call 'typically' New Mexico, although NM has so many different terrains there isn't really a representative.one.  Brown, exposed, rounded rock hillsides, pinon pine and juniper in the valleys, douglas fir in the alpine areas.
My next destination was Georgia O'Keefe country.  While I'm not really a huge fan - I like some of her paintings quite a bit, but a lot of others seem contrived and repetitive - I like her eye for landscape and her abstractions.  She had an affinity for the same country I do. In that way, she is an influence on my work, and I want to explore that.
I saw a 'Ghost Ranch' marked on the map and knew she'd stayed there.  As I headed that way, down the Chama valley, the landscape became more orange sandstone, with some green accents, eroded into striking formations.
I saw a mountain that looked very familiar from her paintings,

I inquired and it is indeed one of her favorite subjects - it's called Pedernal Mountain.
Ghost Ranch was a tourist ranch O'Keefe had visited, and eventually bought a piece of for her home.
There is now a small museum there, and you can see the same views that were her 'back yard'.

Leaving there, the sun was getting low, and the scenery was beautiful.  I spent a couple hours wandering around shooting pictures and enjoying the view.

 Spent the night in Espanola, kind of a funky little town on the way to Santa Fe, but with much cheaper lodging.  Had an OK New Mexican dinner - great posole, average enchiladas.