Goulding Trading Post in the Utah-Arizona desert (8.-10.3.09)

---

The Colorado plateau opened impressively up after we left the Grand Canyon in East direction. We felt a little bit like coming now into the real Wild West and double checked the gasoline level of the car. There is only every 30-50 miles some sort of town. We still remember a small road side village with a Mc Donalds and the advertisement of a Burger King next to it. Distance only 36 miles (60 km)! It took us four hours to reach our next destination of Goulding’s Trading Post at the Arizona-Utah state border. Everything in this village seems to be owned by Mr. Goulding. The saloon, the lodge, the gas station, the store and the camp ground were all displaying the Goulding name. The trading post was founded 1923 as a supply store near the Navajo native lands and the owners kept a good relationship with the tribe. One of the reasons to open the trading post at this place was the stunning view on several impressive table mountains and sand stone pinnacles. The area is known today by the name of Monument Valley. Mike Goulding had the idea to promote this spot as a place for Wild West movies and convinced the famous director John Ford to film here. The director liked the beautiful valley very much, became close friend to Goulding and left the world several John Wayne movies making the area world famous. The former trading posts main house in now converted into a museum and every evening one of the movies is shown.

Monument Valley is not really accessible by hiking. It is independently run by the Navajo tribe and most of the area can be only explored by guided 4x4 tours. We did the only hike surrounding a table mountain in one hour. More interesting is scrambling on the red sandstone rock with some nice arches just behind the camp ground. In the afternoon we explored the museum, spent the evening in the lodge restaurant and watched the 8 pm movie. Meanwhile outside a sand storm battered the landscape lit by a beautiful full moon. We had some difficulties to enter our tent without being covered by the fine sand. Weeks later we still found some of the red dust in our clothing. As it seem to be our destiny, the wind calmed down over night, but we woke up again with snow covering our tent. Yes, the hot and sunny looking pictures are from the same day! We were still at an altitude of 1700m.


Practicalities:
Camping 19 US$ per site (winter)
Monument Valley entrance fee 5 US$ per person (annual National Park pass is not valid)
Goulding museum donation

---