You'll want to be back at Newspaper Rock in time to drive the two and a half hours to the Valley of the Gods Bed & Breakfast (970-749-1164; valleyofthegods.cjb.net; doubles, $155) before sunset, which is about 8 P.M. in spring and 7 P.M. in fall. Former park ranger Gary Dorgan and his wife, Claire, have turned this 1933 stone-hewn ranch into a romantic four-room guesthouse, the lone bit of luxury in this gorgeous but remote corner of Utah. A comment in the guest book says it all: "You can hear the quiet here." With no ambient light pollution for miles, you can also see one of the most brilliant slices of the North American night sky. Taitelbaum will try to arrange for dinner at the B&B tonight, since the nearby options are few. But if you must go elsewhere, your best bet is the Old Bridge Bar & Grill (Rte. 163; 435-683-2220; entrées, $3–$22), just before the San Juan River in the town of Mexican Hat—named for a teetering sombrero-shaped rock on the northern side of town that blows away Arches' Balanced Rock. The menu consists of burgers, Mexican dishes, and Navajo specialties.

Day 4: Cedar Mesa

Having explored the geological wonders of the Southwest, you'll devote today to the region's much shorter—but just as rich—cultural history. Cedar Mesa, a high plateau that begins just northwest of the B&B and spans 400 square miles in southern Utah, was intermittently inhabited by various peoples for more than 14,000 years. The first were Clovis hunters who roamed the mesa alongside their megafauna prey—mammoths, giant sloths, and the like—followed by the Archaic people, who took up hunting smaller mammals and gathering plants, and finally the Basket Maker culture, which saw the appearance of pottery (probably a skill acquired through trade with other cultures) in the area around A.D. 400 but which ended abruptly around A.D. 1300. This disappearance was long a mystery, but it is now thought that the group resettled farther south and eventually gave rise to the Pueblo tribes known as the Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Taos, and others. You'll hear the term Anasazi used in reference to the pre-Pueblo period, but their Hopi descendants believe that the name came from a Navajo word meaning "ancient enemy" and instead prefer Ancestral Puebloans. (The Navajo were intruders, arriving from what is now Alaska and northwestern Canada around A.D. 1500. Indeed, the Navajo share elements of their language and even their DNA with tribes still living in the north.)

Vaughn Hadenfeldt can recite as much of this complicated history as you're prepared to hear while guiding you through Cedar Mesa and showing you some of the Southwest's most pristine, unrestored ruins and rock art (more likely a form of communication than high art). Hadenfeldt, owner of Far Out Expeditions (435-672-2294; faroutexpeditions.com) and a guide in the region for 30 years, was trained as an archaeologist and has worked on numerous scientific expeditions. You may come across kivas (subterranean ceremonial rooms), burial chambers, storage bins, and cliff dwellings inhabited in the combative last years of settlement. The handprints still visible in the ruins' mortar, the tiny corn cobs left from some ancient meal, the shallow moki steps cut into steep rock faces, just big enough for the petite but powerful Anasazi—all of these details bring to life a people who once thrived in this harsh landscape.