Desert 'ING'

Dismal is the description I choose.
My first trip to a real desert, and all I could think was how UGLY I thought it all was. Aw, well let me be a bit more honest. I didn't think it was all UGLY- just dismal. There were no trees. Everywhere I have ever been in my LIFE, but there, TREES live. The stubby growth they called 'trees' were not as big as a weed in Mississippi. Northern Oklahoma has better looking places (and I promised me to NOT live there again).
The ground was NOT soil. I don't know what it was. Just funny ground. Some kind of sandy... or gritty. No grass. LOTS and lots of cacti. Just like in the comic strip- when Peanuts doggie, Snoopy- visits his cousin. (Or was that his brother- oh, I don't remember. I just remember the cacti).
Then, there were rather elegant mountains. Small mountains in the distance, irregularly shaped; and different coloured. So that was not bad. The other nice thing was the WEATHER! I visited in the dead of Winter (in New York) but not in the desert!! Shirt-sleeve temperature.
Then we drove through a little 'settlement'. I suppose since they had a post office, one police car and a store, they called themselves a town. But it was a 'stained', soiled looking little settlement to me. They were rude on the highway, plus I was stopped by the ONLY fat cop there was, for nothing but BEING there. I am sure he just wanted to look at us, up and down, over and under. After his nosy questions, he said "Have a good trip". Boy, I wonder if that made his day, or conversation in the local brew house?
Driving for MILES through nothing but grey, black, adobe red, and stubble strewn country, makes you LONG for a city street and big CocaCola sign. Or maybe I am just 'a city slicker', without meaning to be? In defense, I sigh- "Even big cities have parks with green grass, and a shade tree." Out there in the desert, if you got stranded, I think the story would STILL be like the old 'death valley' movies-
bones bleaching in the sun.
Uh... Hello Alaska.