Libbie was up early for the sunrise over the valley and captured the above image. Beautiful!
I think she was bored out there in the sunrise. This is sunrise camera play (or self portrait) by Libbie.
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| Sunrise Camera Play |
A nice Gouldings breakfast and we're ready to start the day.
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| Breakfast |
The entrance to the Monument Valley park is a few miles South of Gouldings Lodge. There is now a paved parking lot and visitors center at the park entrance, something that was not here when we last visited 24 years ago. Park admission is a very reasonable $5 per person. The park is owned by the Navajo Nation, therefore US National Park passes are not accepted here.
The first stop was the visitors center for a nice overview of the valley. The visitors center is nicely situated on top of a bluff affording a wide open expanse of the valley below. There was slight warm wind blowing across the valley. I have two poses of Libbie, one when the wind stopped and one when it picked up again. Guess which picture I used?
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| A Wind Blown Libbie |
There are some choices to be made for the 17 mile path through the valley. There are escorted jeep tours, group tours on open air buses and the drive through yourself tour. The road is not paved, is quite rough in spots and very sandy on some of the uphills. I decided the Toyota was up for it, so we drove the 17 mile loop.
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| The unpaved 17 mile "path" through the monuments |
One of the things that became apparent on this trip was the number of European tourists visiting the US parks. The Eurpoean country we encountered the most was France. The delightful European woman afforded another opportunity for a great picture, a study of contrasts between jagged rocks and smooth curves.
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| An Interesting Study of Contrasts |
We met a German couple who were using the same camera model as mine, a Canon 7d. We took pictures of each other after exchanging cameras. They were a nice friendly couple who had come from where we were going, to Bryce Canyon and Death Valley.
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| Tom & Libbie at the Monument Valley Visitors Center |
The desert floor is interesting among the sandstone monoliths. Despite the dry, dusty, sandy environment there is green plant life and even a few wildflowers scattered about. Monument Valley rainfall totals around 1/4 inch per month for an annual total of about 4 inches. These are plants that have adapted well to this dry environment.
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| Sand and vegetation on the desert floor |
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| Libbie photographing the barren landscape |
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| Windy, hilly, dusty and well rutted unpaved road through the monuments |
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| ditto to the caption above |
As mentioned in an earlier comment, European tourists were everywhere. I enjoyed this group of young people and the type of pose they were attempting.
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| European tourists |
The Navajo have supported themselves for years making and selling crafts. Throughout the park they set their jewelry, weavings and tapestry on tables and sell the crafts to the tourists. We bought a turquoise and silver necklace from this Navajo lady. I had to wait for her to turn away from the table since most of them expect to be paid a fee to be photographed.
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| Navajo Jewelry vendor |
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| Roadside Navajo jewelry vendor |
Libbie was the passenger as I drove our car through the twisty winding desert. Opportunities for photography are everywhere. Libbie got creative with some mirror shots on our drive.
Despite the road we are on being quite rough and rugged, there are apparently even more challenging pathways that require 4 wheel drive.
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| A photo opportunity |
The road through the desert floor is amazing. Large boulders that seem to be impossibly stacked on smaller rocks, rock outcroppings, wind eroded sandstone and interesting vegetation are a sensory delight.
I found some interesting bark on an old mesquite tree. i know most folks are here to view the sandstone monoliths but I like the smaller details of our journey.
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| Thank you Libbie for this picture |
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| Mesquite tree bark |
As we made our way back to the Visitors Center we encountered a Navajo trail ride. The ride was part of a Navajo health initiative for diabetes screening. Apparently diabetes is a major health issue among the tribe.
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| Navajo trail ride for diabetes |
Once back at the Visitors Center, we stopped along the railing overlook to share a sandwich for lunch. We found a nice lady from Paris, France to take our picture. We tried having a conversation with her but she said she didn't know much English, however her English was better than our French.
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| Lunch along the railing. A nice scenic if not sunny spot. |
The Road to Bryce Canyon
Bryce Canyon is 254 miles from Monument Valley but none of it is on an Interstate. The majority of the travel to Bryce is on the Navajo reservation. From the Monument Valley Visitors center I tried entering the town of Bryce Canyon City into my GPS but it wasn't there. I pulled out our hotel reservation for the Bryce Canyon Grand and found the zip code and tried entering that. The GPS once again balked. We called the number on the reservation (yes you can get a cell phone signal on the reservation) and spoke with the hotel. Bryce Canyon City is a new City with a new zip code and so it wouldn't be in our GPS the desk responded. They gave us a few names of alternate towns to set as our destination so that the GPS could get us close by to them. Once this was all settled, we were on our way.
After traveling through Arizona and entering Utah we saw very pretty rain showers up ahead as can be seen in the photo. The rain turned out to be a photo op only because a few miles ahead the road turned to the right out of the path of the distant rain. I was hoping for a good washing since by now the car was quite dusty with Monument Valley dusty red sand.
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| Rain Showers make a picturesque view ahead |
After a 5 hour afternoon's drive we eventually started seeing HooDoos, a sign that we were getting close to Bryce.
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| HooDoos alongside the road |
We entered Bryce Canyon City and were delighted with our recently built hotel. AAA rates this facility as 3 stars. It's much nicer than I would have expected for a hotel at the entrance to a National Park. The Bryce Canyon National Park shuttle picks up directly in front of the hotel which is very convenient. The room was very spacious and the bathroom surprisingly had two sinks on two separate vanities across from each other.
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| Bryce Canyon Grand Hotel at the entrance to the park |
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| Lobby of the Bryce Canyon Grand. Behind the fireplace is a large dining room where a buffet breakfast is served in the morning. This is a very nice hotel, we highly recommend it. |
We could tell we're not on the Navajo reservation anymore. There is a liquor store across the street and our hotel was able to supply us with a corkscrew for our bottle of wine. Cheers!
