It’s about that time of the summer when work has started to wrap up and autumn quarter has yet to begin. Now is the perfect time for that last summer road trip, but you can’t quite decide where to go. If you want to see a side of the American West that northern California just doesn’t offer, head down the coast and across the Mojave Desert toward the San Juan River in Bluff, Utah.

As an intrepid explorer, I wrangled a friend into joining the weeklong sojourn, packed my boots and headed for the Utah landscape. Here’s a travelogue of my foray into nature and what you might encounter on your very own fantastically natural adventure.

Day One

As it turned out, the road between Palo Alto and Bluff runs through one of the most stunning routes you can drive if you are a geologist, or, well, anybody. Thus the representative student body on this trip consisted of me, my friend and fifteen geology majors.

Our caravan hit 101 going south through the strawberry fields and cow pastures of the Central Valley. The hills were nursed by a week of rain and massive granite formations crumbled through the topsoil. Think Lord of the Rings territory. If you start out from campus in the morning, these granite-flecked hillsides last until dusk, when you’ll head into a long pass with colonies of glistening white wind turbines that rival in number those you pass en route to Yosemite.

A few more minutes along the dusty desert road, and we piled out into what I could only trust was actually a campsite, tossed down sleeping pads and tucked in for a cool desert night in the Mojave.

Day Two

Rustling into wakefulness, I rolled up and nearly rolled off of a steep ledge into the desert. We’d camped on the edge of a sharp incline, just a few meters above the dark orange and brown hazed expanse that stretched untouched for miles in front of us. The Mojave spans about 22,000 square miles across four states, and is littered by tons of Joshua trees. Their cragged branches stand amidst rough brush and cacti, holding up torches of orange pompom flowers. In the summer, temperatures here regularly near 100 degrees.

The group piled back into our vans and sped along the last few hours, past alluring signs for the Grand Canyon and Mesa Verde, eyes sealed on the rugged scenery until we reached the Bluff town limit.

Bluff

Population: 400. Mormons settled the town in 1880 as a part of the Hole in the Rock expedition. Bluff borders the present day Navajo Nation in southern Utah. The towering Navajo sandstone cliffs surround the town’s 400 residents who also happen to drink water so pure and smooth they’ve nicknamed it “bluff champagne.”

We booked rooms at the Decker Horse Inn. The place is a historic landmark and not too expensive. If you get hungry, you can head to the edge of the town, and you’ll find the Twin Rocks Café that has some of the best Navajo fry bread around. Streets one hundred feet wide (enough room to turn around a horse carriage), two restaurants in town, absolutely no beer for sale and crushingly beautiful — that’s Bluff.

Day Three — The River

You can book group river tours with Wild Rivers Expeditions, a little operation about a two-minute walk from Decker Horse Inn. If you’re not so interested in the pursuit of class 5 rapids, don’t fret because the river is pretty calm and the guides are fun to be around and are also really knowledgeable about the area. Our comedic guide had festooned the “Ice Princess,” (a white-gowned doll) to the bow of the raft to bear the brunt of the splashes.

Day Four

We camped on the side of the river opposite the Navajo land.

The Navajo Nation covers about 27,000 square miles of land, spreading across all of northeastern Arizona, into Utah and New Mexico. There are about 300,000 Navajo (traditionally the Diné people) still living in the U.S. and more than half live within this sovereign territory that is still peppered with traditional hogans.

The famous Butler Wash rock art panels along the river draw anthropologists from around the world to study and examine the animals, humans, gods and unexplained forms drawn into the rock thousands of years ago just beyond the banks. You’ll even find ancestral cliff dwellings close by that your river guides will point out as hiking destinations if you’re inclined. The whole area is overflowing with an interesting history that you’ll want to uncover.

Day Five

After three long days on the river, we hauled the rafts out at the river’s end in Mexican hat, Utah. As I’d come to expect, this town also had its own landmark landscape: a colossal sombrero-shaped rock balances on a stone pinnacle hundreds of feet above the river. No big surprise, it’s Utah. I shook the red sand out of my jeans, and we headed back to California.