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Published: August 13th 2009
Monument Valley is famous for its dramatic landscape, gigantic rocks shaped by erosion for millions of years and also for being the set of many Western movies, most of them featuring John Wayne. Some of you will be familiar with some of our pictures. Monument Valley is located inside the Navajo Reservation in the north of Arizona and south of Utah. The day before we toured Monument Valley we passed by the Navajo National Monument. Because the Navajo Reservation is private property very little can be explored without a guide. We joined a whole day tour with a Navajo guide at Gouldings Trading Post. The morning part of the tour took us to Mystery Valley just south of Monument Valley. This part is less well known because it is treated like an archaeological site and also because it dos not feature in Hollywood movies. In our group there was a family from Paris (France, not Texas) and a couple from Santa Fe. It was great company for the whole day. The guide and driver was called Carol. Hard to believe but she is a grandmother already. On our way to Mystery Valley we were already experiencing the day getting hotter and
hotter and the dust that our open 4X4 created. The area is really really dry and the wind helped create a lot of dust also. Our first stop was in an area where we climbed gigantic limestones. Carol explained how the holes in the stones served as water reservoirs for the pueblo people that inhabited the area a long time ago, long before the Navajo arrived. We could also see the foot stands left in the stones as the ancient inhabitants collected the water from these 'reservoirs'. Later, in the Colorado History Museum in Denver, we learned that once the region was lush and inhabited by all sorts of wildlife. It seems that there has been a dramatic change in the conditions in the region and people seemed to have left the region in a hurry. From the top of the limestones we could see most of Monument Valley in the north and whatever side we looked at all we could see was the barren red land and the blue sky in the horizon. Traces from those who lived there before remain in the ruins of old constructions in the stones which were used for food storage. There are also
burial sites. The highlight of the trip for us was to see the petroglyphs and pictoglyphs so close. We wondered around Mystery Valley for the rest of the morning admiring the landscape and the ruins of ancient times till lunch time when our guide cooked lunch for us under the shade of a massive limestone.
After lunch we headed to Monument Valley itself and felt as if we were in a gigantic movie set. It was great fun. The best part was again when we wondered out of the most beaten areas. There was a point where we met another group (the blue jeans group in the picture) and Carol, our guide, and the two guides of the other group performed Navajo songs under the cover of a gigantic stone in a sacred place for the Navajos (I wish I could remember the name now). Anyway, it was really magical. After that we got back to the Trading Post. We finished the day with the sense of having discovered a different world and covered in red sand. We said goodbye to everyone and made our way back to Kayenta, the city where we stayed which is 22 miles from
the Valley.
For more information about Monument Valley you could visit: http://www.utah.com/playgrounds/monument_valley.htm
I left this bit for the end because you may not be interested in knowing how we got to Monument Valley but there are one of two points which are still worth mentioning. If you have time carry on.
We left lush Bryce Canyon and it did not take long for us to start feeling the dramatic changes in the landscape of the region. We stopped at a town called Kanab where we bought our supplies for the following days. We also stopped at the visitor centre to get some information about the region. We got to know how Clint Eastwood has a house in the area and is seen around every now and then. If we waited till the afternoon we would have a chance to meet a Lady who works at the visitor centre and was a regular in the old Westerns. By 11 am the day was quite hot and the cool weather we experienced in Bryce had left us. The heat made it almost unbearable to step out of the car. We drove along the Highway 98 and looked for an
Navajo Reservation
Typical Navajo habitationelusive shade where we could have lunch. It took a couple of hours until we crossed the entry of the Vermilion Cliffs in the Grand Staircase National Monument. They had a pic-nic table in the sun. The ranger allowed to have our lunch in his covered head quarters but it was still hot. After that we stopped again at Lake Powell. It is an artificial lake created by a dam in the Colorado river. Soon after the lake there is the city of Page where we stopped for a quick break and a head shave also as we spotted a barber from the car. It is an unforgettable journey to have experienced all the changes in climate and in geology as well.
Enjoy our pics,
B & R
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