The Savage Traveler: Out West Adventure: Part 2--Natural Bridges, Day 12

Fri. May 17: This will not go down as the best day of the trip, but it had some good points. After getting groceries and gas we got on the road towards Monument Valley. There wasn’t a lot of traffic as we drove up and down many hills past more amazing rock formations. At the last minute we decided to turn off towards the Needles region of Canyonlands National Park, not to go all the way to the Visitors Center but to see Newspaper Rock along the way. 2000 years of humans have left petroglyphs carved into the rock varnish under a protecting outcropping. It is eerie and awe-inspiring to stand near a quiet wash and think of all the others who have passed this way. Along the road we saw a real, live cowboy on horseback, with two dogs, driving a small herd of cattle on the open range. We returned to South 191 and continued, stopping at a helpful Welcome Center and Museum in Monticello. From there we decided to go a little bit out of the way, but hardly, to visit Natural Bridges National Monument. They have a nice Visitors Center with a film explaining the park’s protection of the three bridges and of ancient cliff dwellings of ancestral Puebloans. We ate our picnic lunch on the porch of the Center and then drove the nine mile “Bridge View Drive”. There were very few people present which made it quite pleasant to explore in partial sunshine and with temperatures in the high sixties. There are short walks to give views of the three bridges, Sipapu, Kachina and Owachomo, as well as one to the overlook for Horse Collar Ruin. At Owachomo Marv took a longer hike that took him under the bridge. It was about 4:00 when we finished at the park and we began to take the road to take us 32 miles straight down to Monument Valley. But at the top there is a sign warning that it includes a 2.2 mile stretch of gravel road with many switchbacks and 10% grade. That sounded a bit too dicey for us with the camper. So instead we had to go 65 miles around and got there at 7:00. The brochure on Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park said they had a dry camp ground at the Cultural Center but when we got there we found out it is under construction. We had no option but to go to the overly expensive Goulding’s RV Park nearby. I made spaghetti sauce while Marv got things cleaned up from all the dust we had gotten in the desert and driving today’s roads. The WiFi at this park wasn't strong enough to allow us to do much but post one entry on the Blog. We were both pretty exhausted as we tried to make plans for visiting the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park in the morning and then go on to the north rim of the Grand Canyon for the weekend.