Out West Adventure: Part 2--Monument Valley, Day 13

Sat. May 18: The morning dawned sunny and clear with temperatures in the mid-sixties. We made it over to Monument Valley by soon after 9:00 and looked at their Cultural Displays in the museum, especially enjoying the story of the Navajo Code Talkers who were so crucial to the US in the Pacific during World War II. We learned that the entire Navajo reservation covers one-third of the 130,000 square mile Colorado Plateau. This is also the area where John Ford made so many Westerns with John Wayne and Henry Fonda, among others. The 17 mile, unpaved, very rough Valley Drive passes among many of the “Monuments”, fanciful and towering rock mesas and buttes formed over eons of time by water, ice and wind erosion.  We were happy to leave the camper in the parking lot and slowly creep along the drive, which took about 2 hours. Before leaving Monument Valley we had a delicious lunch of their “world famous” Green Chili and Indian Fry Bread at The View Restaurant. By 12:30 we had reattached the camper and were on our way to Jacob Lake, 47 miles north of the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Marv had mapped out how he wanted to drive there but followed the GPS directions instead of his plan and, when we got near Lake Powell and were going to drop south on US89 in Arizona we found that the road had fallen in and was closed. We had to go north back into Utah and come from that direction, about 30 miles out of the way. Luckily we found the road to be less rugged than our original plan and we made good time and good mileage until we climbed onto the Kaibab Plateau to an elevation of around 8000ft. Because we were finding that the propane gas option on the refrigerator isn’t effective over about 5500ft. we found an electric campsite at a nice RV Park near a dry BLM campground we first considered. The RV Park had a laundry and we were there early enough to do two loads of clothes as we ate a light dinner of soup and leftover blue corn tortillas from The View. Ken called soon after dinner and we had a nice, long chat to cap off the evening as the temperature slipped into the forties. 

Sunsetting on the Red Rocks

Three Sisters (left) and Totem Pole

Iconic view which evokes the old Westerns filmed here