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Noah wondered if she’d noticed his anxiety or if she was just making conversation. Hopefully the second. He made an effort to relax his hands, which were splayed aggressively on his thighs.
Vanessa continued. “And Alec is right. It’s totally worth it.”
Noah looked pointedly out the window before turning back to Vanessa with lifted brows.
She chuckled. “I promise! We’re not that far from Moab. Look!” she said, gesturing to a bluish hint of snow-capped mountains on the horizon. “Those are the La Sals, the second-highest mountain range in Utah.”
“Only second, huh?” Garth said. “Baby mountains compared to Colorado.”
Vanessa’s smile broadened as she turned her gaze to Garth. “They’re close to 13,000 feet. Still nothing to sneeze at.”
“I thought Moab was all about sandstone, not mountains,” Emily said.
“That’s just what made it famous,” Vanessa said, “but pretty soon we should be—yeah, look!”
A line of bright green broke through the monotony, and the road brought them into a narrow valley bisected by the muddy water of the Colorado River. Bright-green fields stretched between red cliffs, the pavement occasionally hugging the walls, the river sometimes seeming to lap at their tires. An involuntary sigh escaped Noah, his worry easing away with it.
“Fantastic, isn’t it?”
He pulled his gaze from the window and found Vanessa watching him. “Yeah,” he said.
“Ever been to Moab?”
“Nope.”
“If you ever get the chance, take it.”
“Have you spent a lot of time here?” he asked.
Emily laughed. “She came once and ended up changing her major to geology.”
“Really?” Noah asked.
“Yeah,” Vanessa said with a wince. “I could live my whole life down here and never run out of places to explore.”
“I bet,” Noah said, turning his attention back to the scenery. Campgrounds sprouted in the floodplain as cliffs ranging beige to dark red slipped past, bright- and dark-green bushes growing directly out of the rock. As they drew nearer to Moab, the canyon walls rose nearly vertical on either side, dark streaks of desert “varnish,” as Vanessa called it, painting their faces. Noah watched mountain and road bikers on a separate paved trail between road and river as the gorge widened, and before he knew it the cliffs had thrown their arms wide to reveal the verdant Moab valley.
Alec pulled into a park at the gorge’s mouth, right next to the busy main highway bridging the river. “See?” he said to Jane. “Right on time and totally worth it.”
Jane looked at her watch and smiled. “Not quite on time but, yes, worth it. We’ll stop here for about ten minutes if anyone wants to stretch their legs or use the restrooms.”
One of the twins hauled the side door open, allowing warm, dry air to seep into the van. Noah waited for the others to exit, then stepped into the sunshine and let the sun heat his back as he watched the river flow across the valley and into a gap in the cliffs on the other side.
“Nice, isn’t it?” Vanessa said.
Noah nodded. “This valley looks different from the river gorge.”
“That’s because it wasn’t cut by the river.”
Noah gawked at the marvels around him, listening as Vanessa pointed out fault lines and explained how the valley was formed when an underlying layer of salt washed away.
“I’m boring you,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.
Noah tore his eyes from the cliffs. “Not at all. I’m just—this is so amazing. I can’t get over the magnitude of the forces it took to create all this—turning sand into solid rock, then lifting it up and washing it away over millions of years. It’s incredible.”
Vanessa’s eyes were laughing.
“Did I get it wrong?” Heat blossomed in his cheeks.
