Day 23 – 24 Monument Valley

We have begun our trek back east and made our final park stop in Monument Valley on the Navajo Reservation between upper Arizona and lower Utah near the four corners area. While technically not a National Park, as it is in Navajo Territory, this iconic landscape was made famous by John Ford in Stagecoach, and numerous other westerns. It even features prominently in National Lampoon’s Vacation, Back to the Future II and Forest Gump when he is running across America. There is no place in the world like it. Which bring us a point, in virtually all of our Park visits we have been surrounded by many more international travelers than Americans, especially Germans and French. It is peculiar that these foreigners travel across the world to see a part of the USA that many Americans have never seen, including us until this trip.

Our first day brought our only rain that interrupted one of our scheduled tours but it was interesting to see the waterfalls running off of the mesas in an area that typically sees only 8 inches of rainfall a year.

We visited a Navajo hogan, the traditional homes Navajos lived in before modern times.

There are too many photos to include here, I’ll upload them in an album later. The next day we had booked a tour to “Mystery Valley” which is on the other side of the main mesa that begins Monument Valley. It turned out to be a private tour as we were the only ones booked, which was great.

The tour started out with a bracing trip in the back of an open air touring truck at highway speed which will really wake you up in the morning! It turned into a beautiful sunny morning as we drove deeper into this otherworldly landscape. Everywhere you turned there was more amazing scenery and we wound up taking more photos here than anywhere else on our trip. We’ll be creating another album when we return but below are a few samples.