I could live a thousand years and never grow tired of sunset on sandstone. Colors invisible under noon's hot light emerge as reds fleeting as flames, the ancient rock transforming by the second, before darkness takes hold of the day.

My friend Tom and I have nailed it, catching the last light at Valley of Fire State Park near Las Vegas. We're barely an hour out of a casino, where we watched the false sky on the ceiling progress from hot pink to deep purple as it mimicked the changing desert day. Now we're seeing the real deal — sunset perhaps, but the beginning of a 1,050-mile loop into the heart of the Southwest.

If you were going to choose one drive to capture the West, this journey into the Colorado Plateau might be it. For Tom and me, the drive into this epic terrain, home to such American shrines as the Grand Canyon and Zion, is the ultimate road trip. Our route takes in four national parks and nearly a dozen national monuments, recreation areas, and state parks; it ranges 10,000 feet in elevation, from desert to above timberline.

Along the way we'll meet cowboys and Navajos. We'll follow mountain-lion tracks and watch from remote plateaus as distant puffs of cloud build into towering thunderheads. And so we drive, usually hundreds of miles a day, seeking the right place at the right moment — like this Nevada sunset. Because, as Tom likes to say, "Now is now."

Elsewhere in the Southwest: Cozy up to Lake Powell