Day 68, Monday March 14

What a magnificent day!  We left at 9am for a 3.5 hr. tour into the Monument Valley with a Navajo guide.  It was fantastic!  Monument Valley is a Navajo Tribal Park (30,000 acres).  Most of the park is not accessible, but we travelled about 20 miles on unbelievable roads.  Many were barely wide enough for the Jeep to drive down.  They looked more like a livestock trail than a road.  Almost all were red soft dirt or sand and there were a few times we thought for sure we’d be stuck.  Never happened.   This majestic place, carved by the wearing down by wind and water of altering layers of soft and hard rock, was totally unbelievable.  We went out to a number of famous sites and saw beautiful sandstone rock formations, desert foliage and petroglyphs.  All the rock formations and mesas have names like Right Mitten, Three Sisters, Brigham’s Tomb, Totempole and Stagecoach.  It was really hard to get a perspective on the size of these massive towers and pinnacles in a photo, but many are 400 to 1,000 feet.  We stopped and visited a Hogan, saw a wool carding/spinning and weaving demonstration, learned about Navajo culture and lifestyle.  It’s amazing to us that most all the home sites we saw had no electricity or running water.  They heat and cook with wood and haul their water from miles away.  They prepare and spin wool the old-fashioned way, using dyes made from native plants.  They live much like their ancestors did and seem perfectly fine with that.  Many of the homes don’t even look habitable.  The temperature was sunny and in the mid 50s with a strong wind.  The morning was a little chilly, but by late morning, we were comfortable.  We came home tired, wind blown and with a fine layer of red dust all over us.  We both took a truckload of pictures.  It was hard to just send just a few.  

 

Later in the afternoon, we went back into the park to take pictures with the lower sun.  The Navajo hotel in the park is called The View.  We stopped there for dinner.  All the windows in the restaurant face the valley, so we got a great view with dinner.

Day 69, Tuesday March 15

Another great day.  We drove north to Goosenecks State Park.  This is where the San Juan River twists and turns, switchbacking more than 6 miles while advancing less than 2 miles toward Lake Powell.  Very interesting geology.  Some of it looks like a mining operation.

We stopped at a famous viewpoint called Forrest Gump point.  It’s been a while since we’ve seen Forrest Gump, so forgot it was filmed here.

Our last stop was Gouldings Lodge/Trading Post/Museum.  Harry and Leone “Mike” Gouldings came to the Monument Valley in the early 20’s and purchased a substantial plot of land.  They set up a Trading Post and conducted business for many years with the Navajo people, who traded hand crafted items like rugs and jewelry in exchange for food and other goods.  When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s, the Navajo Reservation suffered greatly.  Harry heard of a movie production company scouting for locations to film in the Southwest.  Harry and Mike made it their mission to bring a movie production company to the Monument Valley to help the economy.  Travelling to Hollywood, they met the famous director, John Ford.  When Ford saw the photos they’d brought, he knew it was perfect for his next movie location.  The first movie made in Monument Valley was “Stagecoach” starring John Wayne.  Over the years the Gouldings continued to host movie crews, photographers, artists and tourists.  They built a lodge and dining facility to accommodate their guests that still stands today.  These pioneers made Monument Valley an icon of the American West as depicted in many movies.  The original Trading Post and their upstairs apartment are now a museum with lots of photos and original furnishings.

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