Mack, Colorado, is a settlement of about 200 people off I-70, just a stone's throw from the Utah Border. There are no village offices, so folks gather at the Colorado Club bar and restaurant for town meetings, just like the old days when judges held court in western saloons.
But for one week in June, Mack is the biggest city on Colorado's western slope of the Rockies. Upwards of 100,000 people pour into town for Country Jam - a big-time music festival.
It's country's version of Woodstock, with thousands of people crammed in front of open-air stages listening headliners like Reba McEntire and Travis Tritt.
"It's so busy here you can't breathe," said Barbara Smith who owns the Desert Gateway general store, just down the street from the Colorado Club. Barb's never been to the festival, she's too busy at the store. But she's not a big country fan anyway.
Barb's passion is teddy bears. She has hundreds of them all over the store.
 Teddy bear women Barb Smith from Mack, CO surrounds herself with just a few of her Teddy bear collection. Her collection stemmed from a visit to Yellowstone where she witnessed a live bear from a distance. Her curiosity has sparked to the point of collecting over a thousand Teddies from all over the U.S. and abroad.
They're on the walls, in cases, on counters and on shelves. They're every-what color, shape, size and style.
There are giant carnival-prize bears and thumbnail-sized pewter bears. There are bears with carved wooden faces and a family of 13 bears around a Christmas tree.
There's even a jack-in-the-box bear emerging from a baseball to the tune of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game."
There are hundreds more bears in the back of the building where Barb, her husband, T.J., and their five dogs live.
She's been fascinated by teddies since she was a kid and began collecting them years ago.
When we met, I told T.J., 'If you take me, you have to take my bears, too,"
Barb said. The hobby got out of hand after they bought the store (which was once a bordello) 14 years ago.
"We get people from all over the world here on their way to Moab (Utah). When they get home they send bears from their country. The only thing I don't have now is a koala bear from Australia," she said.
Barb doesn't know how many bears she has, but there are so many that some of them are gathering dust. And all over the store you see signs that say "Bears Not For Sale."
Gosh, that would be like Barbara selling her children.
There are bear pictures everywhere, too, including the bathrooms. One of the bathroom pictures was stolen a few years ago.
"When I realized it was gone, I cried like a little kid. I was so sad, to think someone would do that," she said.
So she wrote a poem that now hangs in the ladies room:
"A bear once hung in this bare spot,
Someone took it without giving a thought
It broke my heart, I cannot believe
This world is filled with such low-life thieves."
There are plenty of regulars in jeans who stop at the general store for coffee and chatter. And plenty of tourists dressed in shorts and city clothes.
Barb and T. J. have lots of stories about the business, especially the folks who stop for gas.
"My favorite was the guy with the big trailer who said this was stupid place because the hose wasn't long enough to reach his tank," Barb said.
"Well, he was parked with the his gas tank on the opposite side of the trailer from the pumps. I told him go turn around and pull in the other way. He turned around and pulled into the other side of the pump (with the tank again away from the pump). It still didn't reach and he yelled, "See, I told you!"
DESERT
Mack is the last westbound stop on I-70 before Utah. You could also say it's where the desert starts. From Mack, Route 6 runs parallel to the highway, but 6 is all-but abandoned now. Tiny pink and white cacti grow thorough the cracks in the pavement. Mother Nature is reclaiming the road.
On the roadside, evergreens grow along the dry riverbeds. Beyond that, brown shrubs and brown grass blend into the brown earth.
Past the border, there's a town that, like the unused sections of Route 6, seems to be headed back to nature. Buildings are abandoned, roofs and walls collapsing. A one-time store or gas station is a hollow shell. In the back, junk cars and trucks abound. There's a rusted silo in the distance. No trespassing signs are everywhere.
One or two houses look as though someone might live there, but there are no people in sight. No barking dogs. No sounds. I thought: This looks like the end of the earth.
ARCHES
Moab, Utah, is a Mecca for people lured by some of the most haunting landscapes in the nation, perhaps in the world.
 A visitor stands underneath one of Arches National Park's most popular formations - Delicate Arch.
Canyonlands and Arches national parks are just outside town, but when you enter them, you're traveling to another planet. Only a few minutes drive from the Arches entrance you spot immense pale red stone slabs that look like skyscrapers at the edge of a vast pothole gouged by centuries of erosion.
Generations ago, visitors called this area Park Avenue - because it reminded them of the New York skyline.
Further along the road, you see free-standing monoliths - carved into intricate shapes by nature and transformed into living art by shadows. A giant rock balances on one end of a monolith. Three spires stand at the other end, each of them with round rocks balanced on top, making them look like ghostly guards to the park. We are, after all, barely at the beginning of our journey.
Look behind and you see the figure of a resting sheep clearly etched into another monolith.
At Petrified Dunes, you're looking at a world where the earth is a brownish red series of bumps for miles. It's as though you were a bug standing on the rim of a vast bowl of lumpy oatmeal.
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Balanced Rock is one of the park's most well known features, with a huge boulder precariously standing atop a dog-legged shaped pedestal. It's the most well known balancing act in the park, but it's not alone. There are scores, maybe hundreds, of balancing rocks in the park. Most of them are illusions.
 The sunrise silhouettes the rock formation called the Balanced Rock located in the Arches National Park near Moab, UT. The total height of the formation is 128 feet with the large bolder atop standing 55 feet and weighing approximately 3,577 tons.
They're not delicately balanced pairs of rocks, but single rocks where the base has worn away more quickly than the top. It's the same process that creates arches. Soft stone below hard stone.
From a distance, the Windows Arches don't look spectacular. But walk along the path until you're below South Window and look up. You'll see the sky framed in a gigantic arch as though you were looking through the world's biggest window.
What a show!
Walk farther along a less-traveled path and you see the Twin Window- arches side by side, like a pair of cat's eyes.
For the hardy, the hike up to Delicate Arch - Utah's most photographed site - is worth the effort. Never mind that I climbed up as a thunderstorm was rolling in from the west. I had one eye on the trail and one on the clouds.
At the end of the 1.5 mile hike, you'll walk on a five-foot-wide ledge leading to the rear of the arch. The wind was howling as I neared the top and it was nearly strong enough to knock me down as I reached the opening where Delicate Arch stands before you, framing the valley beneath it.
Heights bother me, but I'd make that climb again to this very special place. If you don't want to hike, there are two viewing spots near the road where you can see the arch from a distance.
On my way down, people were still climbing despite the ever-closer clouds. It was raining when I reached the parking lot and there were a few bolts of lightning in the distance.
I hope those folks made it down ok.
At Owl Rock, (which doesn't look anything like an owl) three 20-something men were preparing to climb a 110-foot cliff.
"Moab is world-known for climbing. It's the sandstone that attracts us," said Kirk Hill of Ohio as he slipped into a harness, before beginning his ascent.
Owl Rock is one of the most climbed surfaces in Arches, Kirk said. He suspects
Owl Rock got its name because people like to climb it at night.
For Kirk climbing is about the thrill of accomplishment and overcoming fear.
"When you get to the point where it feels safe and you can concentrate on the challenge, that's when it's the best," he said. "It's like yoga, it just feels good."
Kirk eased into a fissure and wedged himself up inch by inch. As I watched from a distance, he disappeared into the crack and seemed to became part of the cliff. He was one with nature.
Windows, Balance Rock and Delicate Arch are three of the must-see spots in Arches. But the park is more, of course - and many of it's wonders aren't in guidebooks.
It's looking out from a hilltop over miles and miles of canyon; it's the wind howling through the rocks, the moments alone, seeing hundreds of water-filled potholes on a plateau overlooking a wide valley, spotting archlettes not big enough to be named, or finding your own faces, figures and shapes in the rocks and cliffs.
MELON MAGIC
A couple of years ago, Dudley McIhenny of Salt Lake City bought some melons in Green River, Utah. They were so good that he couldn't resist stopping again when was out this way on an archeological dig.
That happens a lot in Green River, the melon capitol of Utah. People pull off the highway just for the melons.
"Everything here is just right for growing them," said Larry Bowerman, who was working the Dunham CQ melon stand on Route 6 at the eastern edge of town.
"We've got the river, the soil sweetens them up and they like the desert climate: cold nights and warm days."
I tried some watermelon. It was perfect and very sweet.
Larry spends most of his day helping customers choose the right melon. The first thing he asks is when they plan to eat it.
"Is this a good one?" one customer asks showing him a cantaloupe. Larry looks at the orange hue and says yes. Then he feels it and changes his mind. "It's a little soft - that's the right color though."
He finds another the same shade of orange and the right texture, brushes it off and gives it to the customer. The cost: 30-cents a pound. Watermelons sell for 20-cents a pound.
 Branden Wetherington weighs a locally grown watermelon as he helps customers at the Dunham Melon Stand in Green River, UT. Green River is known for their melon growing. The Dunham Melon Stand carries many varieties.
He tells another customer that honeydews need to be "a little springy at the blossom end. Eat it right away if it feels at all soft."
Dunham is one of three big melon farms in Green River, Larry said. The family grows them about five miles from town and sell them as far north as Salt Lake and east into Colorado.
It was busy day. A pick-up truck pulled into the driveway and three laborers unloaded a couple of hundred melons, tossing them, one-by-one, from the truck to a worker on the ground to another who set them in the stand. Then they headed back to the farm to pick more.
Green River once called itself the melon capitol of the world, but they don't do that any more.
"Seems like every state has a place like this. A place on a river with the right soil and climate," Larry said.
I wonder if every state has someone as helpful as Larry.
 This rock art located near Thompson Springs, UT was created by the Fremont Culture - which thrived from about A.D. 600 to A.D. 1250. The figures are a representation of the Fremont culture and times, which have been pecked, incised, or painted onto the rock.
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