Utah is Otherworldly

Nothing could have prepared me for Utah, as I will admit we drove into it with minimal knowledge of its topography. It has five national parks, two mostly mountains from down below (Arches and Zion), two mostly canyons from above (Canyonlands and Bryce Canyon), and one oasis running between two desert mountain chains that was settled by ten Mormon families who had to constantly flee flooding at various times of the year (Capitol Reef). The whole state could be a national park. Until we got to the far western edge, we never saw any level ground at all. Just when you think the desert is about to flatten out, a huge pinnacle of rock, boulder, or lone mountain peak will loom out of it. The explanation is about water, freezing into ice when desert temperatures drop, expanding, breaking rocks apart, pushing layers up from the ground, etc. Over thousands of years. And that certainly has been happening. But the water explanation made me also wonder if maybe the floods of the deep at the time of Noah broke through the earth's surface in Utah? Someday we will know for sure.