Across The Solar System in Moab

Goofy–but fun for me–there is a scale model of the solar system in Moab. It starts with the Sun in the middle of a basketball court, then Mercury in the near by public library. Walk a block to Venus in a corner of the ball court. Then we had trouble finding Earth, located near a bridge (Rich said if this were a science fiction movie or book we’d be court martialed for missing Earth) and then along the creek to a tunnel housing Mars.
The Asteroid Belt is noted but not marked, and for Jupiter you have to start driving out of town to mile marker 124. Saturn is at marker 123 and then we took a detour to admire some petroglyphs by the golf course. Uranus is mile marker 121, and yes, the solar system is big enough that by now we’ve left the county to find Neptune at 118, and Pluto (downgraded to dwarf but still present) at mile marker 116.
Since we were on our way to the Needles section of Canyonlands we just kept going, I guess technically now out of the solar system. Moab was lovely with forsythia and perfect light on the red cliffs and pancakes for breakfast. Needles spectacular–wonderful to essentially be on canyon floor looking up at red monoliths while Island in the Sky looks down We hiked the potholes–fascinating depressions in rough rock that flood in rain bringing to life tiny tough shrimp and crustaceans whose eggs may wait for years.
The universe is a big place (so is Four Corners)–and I was happy to see a nice motel in Cortez, Colorado with a swimming pool at the end of the day.