Monument Valley

May 3, 2009

After eating our breakfast of vienna sausage, bread, peanut butter, and jelly, we left for Monument Valley. Of course we made several stops along the way.

Our first stop was the Needles district of Canyonlands. Two days ago, we were in the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands. The detour to Needles was not worth the time…the drive to the park was about an hour from the main highway. What was worth the time was the stop at Newspaper Rock, a wall of petroglyphs. A petroglyph is an etching on a rock while a pictograph is a painting on a rock.

Lunch was in Monticello at a gas station’s Taco place. Ugh! Monticello is a small town and we didn't know where else to eat.

We then drove to the Edge of the Cedar Museum. Unfortunately, because of budget cuts, the museum decided to close on Sundays. Fortunately, we didn’t have to drive out of the way to visit it.

So we decided to go to Goosenecks State Park. Now this was worth going to. The area is primitive (no visitor center at all and pit toilets only), but the landscape is priceless. Goosenecks refers to the tight meandering of the San Juan River between cliffs that hug the river. The view from the top truly makes the river and the cliffs look like goose necks.

By the way, the pit toilets in all the parks we’ve visited were very clean and didn’t smell nasty at all.

After another hour, we arrived at Monument Valley at 5 pm. The Valley is a Navajo Nation park. We checked in at ‘The View’, the hotel inside the park. The hotel is beautiful…all the rooms have balconies that looked out the valley. We quickly booked a 2 ½ hour tour. The tour allowed us to visit places in the park that is not accessible unless guided by a Navajo guide. Because there was just Dek and me, we had the guide all to ourselves. The road was rough and at times we had to hold on tight so as not to be thrown out of the open tour van. It was a very informative tour (cold and dusty, too) and it was 8:10 pm by the time we returned back to the hotel. We immediately went to the hotel’s restaurant (as they close 9 pm) without washing up.

I ordered green chile stew and Dek ordered pozole. The pozole was tasteless… my chile stew was tasty BUT I could have drank that stew as there was very little meat and vegetables in it. Our orders came with fry bread which I like a lot ever since I tried it a few years ago during our New Mexico vacation.