The Syncline Loop trail in the northwest of the park traverses some sandstone on the top for about 15 minutes, then starts descending into the canyon. As I climbed down this trail I could not stop thinking about the Spaceman Spiff episodes from Calvin and Hobbes, since Bill Watterson modelled many of the alien planets after Canyonlands and Monument Valley. I can just see Calvin’s crashed, smoking spaceship at the bottom of the left cliff... One of the things that makes this landscape so compelling to me is how the layer underneath the cliffs (the Moenkopi Formation, seen here as gray) appears flat, giving the appearance of different levels when viewed from above.