we went on a family trip out to the Colorado River Valley near Moab, Utah, once. I remember thinking that the countryside there was just such an utter moonscape, completely alien, and wondering what on earth would keep you going. There was a Victorian house there which is now a hotel, in the one acre of green in all this martian landscape, where some early settler's wife had absolutely refused to go any further. I was fairly boggled by this trip, too.