Monument Valley

Monument Valley has always been on my mind since I was a kid.  If you have watched an old western movie or two, it was part of the scenery.  It is a place I had to visit while I was on this earth. 

John Ford, the famous movie director, shot dozens of moving pictures here.  The most famous being the John Wayne epic, The Searchers.  It is an incredible location with tall Red Sandstone Buttes that the Navajo call The Valley of the Rocks. This was a must-stop on our trip to California.  We are about a month into the trip.  We are camped in the Navajo Nation at Canyon De Chelly, about 100 miles away from the Valley.  So we're off on an adventure.  We drive through siltstone valleys that the buttes sit on.  It's a desert landscape where the views go on forever.  

Monument Valley is a Navajo National Park.  There is a $10 entrance fee to drive the 17-mile dirt road that winds through the buttes.  The most famous being the West, East Mitten, and Merrick Butte.  Those three buttes form that famous picture of the Valley. 

It seems surreal that we are finally here.  Our first stop is John Ford's Point.  It's a famous scene where John Wayne looks over the Valley searching for his niece, who has been kidnapped by an Indian raiding party.  It's a moving portrait of the Wild West. 

While driving the 17-mile loop, it was a full-on adventure.  The road was crowded with tourists from around the world.  They were on a road that required 4-wheel drive.  The tourist with their low-clearance rental cars were all over the place.   We still had fun driving around the slow-moving traffic. 

After touring Monument Valley, we started our trek back to our camp at Canyon De Chelly.  We stop in Kayenta at the Amigo Cafe.  It was good to get my Fried Bread Taco, which filled up a whole dinner plate.  After a great, long day, we are back at camp with visions of Monument Valley in our dreams.

Weather Balloons and the Roswell UFO Crash Site

In 1947, an Air Force Weather Balloon crashed in the barren cattle country northwest of Roswell, New Mexico.   A lot of people, including Google Maps, think this is a UFO crash site.  It’s now all part of an urban legend that refuses to die.  We were in the Blanco Mountains, within driving distance of the site.  After all, who can say they’ve been to a UFO Crash Site?

Well, since we were here, why not?  It’s why we have a Jeep to explore the unusual.   So we drove 40 miles out of the  Mountains into the desert to see the crash site.  Our drive through ranch country began on pavement, then transitioned to a dirt road, and finally to a 4-wheel drive two-track road, which led us to the site.

At one time, there was a plaque that had been removed.  In its place was a rock pyramid with various items left by visitors incorporated in and around the pyramid.  The drive to the site felt out of this world.  Vast rolling sagebrush country for as far as the eye could see, with the Blanco Mountains to our back. 

We did this on a whim.  We really had no expectations of a close encounter with alien life forms.  It was good just to be in the desert, seeing something strange. 

Canyon De Chelly and the Navajo Nation

We spent a week exploring the Navajo Nation.  We camped at Canyon De Chelly in the National Monument Campground.  The National Monument Visitor Center and Campground are located at the mouth of the Canyon.  It was an eye-opening experience.   The Canyon itself is a natural wonder with high escarpments and a cottonwood tree-dotted floor, but this isn't the complete story.  

The Navajo still live in the Canyon, passing the land on from generation to generation through the maternal side of the family.  Yes, the Navajo women are the caretakers of the Canyon and the greater Navajo Nation.  

The Canyon is a geographical marvel comprised of 83,840 acres (131 sq mi; 339 km2) that includes the floors and rims of the three major canyons: de Chelly, del Muerto, and Monument.  These canyons were created by streams from the Chuska Mountains.   It has been continuously occupied since  Ancestral Puebloan times.

Originally from 1300 to the early 1700s, the Canyon was occupied by the Hopi Indians.   Their presence can still be felt throughout the Canyon by the various cliff dwellings that remain.  The only way to visit the Canyon floor is through a Navajo-guided tour.   This tour was one of the major highlights of our 80-day trip out West.  In addition to seeing the beauty of the Canyon, we learned of the history and the battles that were fought there.  It is a story of tragedy and rebirth. 

Kit Carson of Frontier Fame was ordered during the Civil War to round up the Navajo because there was a perception that they were aiding the Confederate cause.  At Canyon De Chelly, over 3000 Navajo were rounded up by the US Army after a scorched earth campaign, then a siege of Spider Rock.    They were then forced to walk 130 miles to a reservation in New Mexico, which came to be known as the Long Walk.    After the Civil War, around 1000 returned to the Navajo Nation created by treaty. 

One Navajo elder said of the Long Walk: "By slow stages, we traveled eastward to present Gallup and Shush Bìtó, Bear Spring, which is now called Fort Wingate.  You ask how they treated us?  If there was room, the soldiers put the women and children on the wagons.  Some even let them ride behind them on their horses.  I have never been able to understand people who killed you one day and on the next played with your children ...[9]"

Today, from the 1000 who returned, the Navajo Nation has grown to over 200k souls.  The largest Indian Nation in North America includes over 17000 square miles with major parts of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico within its borders.  Larger than 10 states, it is a cultural treasure.  

Standing in line at a Tour Office, two Navajo men were talking to each other in their native tongue.  In English, in a joking manner, if you're wondering what we're talking about, it's you.   I just said I have been talked about by worse people.  We then had a good laugh and went on our tour to the canyon floor with them.  It was a magical experience.