Friday Photos: Monument Valley, Utah

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Friday 19, October, 2012 was the day I ‘died and went to heaven’, and here are the photos to prove it. Ok, so my idea of heaven may be different from yours, but I will take Monument Valley’s stunning landscape any day, over some mythical landscape in the hereafter.

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The area is part of the Colorado Plateau. The elevation of the valley floor ranges from 5,000 to 6,000 feet (1,500 to 1,800 m) above sea level. The floor is largely siltstone or sand derived from it, most of which was left behind by the rivers that once carved out the valley. The vivid red colour comes from iron oxide exposed in the weathered siltstone, while the darker, blue-gray rocks in the valley get their colour from manganese oxide.

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A very modest $5.00 will get you entry into the park, where the adventurous can embark on a 17-mile (27 km) dirt road route that passes some of the largest and most spectacular land formations.

The buttes are clearly stratified, and reveal three main layers. The lowest layer is known as the Organ Rock Shale, the middle is de Chelly Sandstone, and the top layer is the Moenkopi Formation.

More Information

Wikipedia…

Discover Navajo website…

Official Navajo Nation website…

Monument Valley, AZ/UT

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My travel journal entry for Friday 19, October, 2012 begins:

Today I died and went to heaven - and I have the photos to prove it.

Yes, that was the day I fulfilled a life-long ambition to visit Monument Valley. The valley spans the Arizona/Utah border, with the most iconic buttes and mesas on the Utah side. It was everything I expected it to be and more. Even in the middle of the day the setting was larger than life, with massive red monoliths dominating the landscape.

I had been driving my Dodge rental car up from Flagstaff, Arizona for several hours, watching as the landscape slowly changed from pine forested open country to vast expanses of dry desert covered in the valley's distinctive vivid red―a colour which is produced from iron oxide exposed in the siltstone covering the valley floor. In many respects the colour of the earth reminded me of the rich reds and ochres of the Australian outback, especially in an area often referred to as the ‘red centre’.

Welcoming billboard on the Arizona/Utah state line

Monument Valley (Navajo: Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii, meaning valley of the rocks) is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft (300 m) above the valley floor. It is located on the Arizona-Utah state line near the Four Corners area. The valley lies within the range of the Navajo Nation Reservation, and is accessible from U.S. Highway 163. [Wikipedia…]

The American director, John Ford used the location for a number of his best known films, including his now classic 1939 movie, Stagecoach, and The Searchers, while the latest Hollywood film to feature scenes shot in the valley is The Lone Ranger, which coincidentally opens today in the cinema complex a few minutes walk from where I sit writing this.

One of the massive outcrops in Monument Valley

To my surprise, the cost to enter the park was a very modest $5.00. Once inside the park visitors can drive on a 17-mile (27 km) dirt road (a 2-3 hour trip) that passes some of the largest and most spectacular land formations. Guided tours are also available, as are horse rides and overnight camping trips. Apparently, hot air balloon flights are also available between May 1 through October 31, although I did not see any during my visit.

Sadly, my day trip to Monument Valley was over way too soon. The eleven hour round trip outing left me tired but exhilarated, and wanting much more. Far from removing the valley from my ‘bucket list’, the area remains among the top ten locations on the planet I want to visit or return to. When I do return to Monument Valley, I want to make the Navajo Tribal Park a major part of my experience, and I figure the only way to do that properly is find accommodations inside the Tribal Park.

Thankfully this is easily done following the construction of The View Hotel, located right inside Monument Valley.

The View Hotel [image courtesy The View Hotel website...]

The View Hotel is the only hotel located inside Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park adjacent to the Monument Valley Tribal Park Visitors Center. Each of the hotel’s 95 rooms features a private balcony with unobstructed views of the valley floor, and the massive sandstone monuments that tower out of the stunning landscape.

Just writing and thinking about my visit, makes me want to pack my bag and catch the next flight to Los Angeles! But patience is the order of the day, at least until next year. Then all being well, I will make my return to the valley of my dreams.

More Information

Wikipedia… 

Discover Navajo website… 

Official Navajo Nation website… 

The View Hotel…

Jetlagged and Muddleheaded

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So here I am, still jetlagged and feeling muddleheaded, adjusting once again to being back in Adelaide, Australia after my latest three month extended travels through America.

The route map above, plots out my trip from New York City to Los Angeles, California, although the map doesn’t show my day trips out of Flagstaff, Arizona, from where I headed out each day in my hire car to the Grand Canyon (twice), Sedona and environs, and up to Monument Valley, Utah.

This completes my third visit to the United States in six years, and I’m delighted to say that once again, I had a great trip, during which I met many friendly locals, and spent more time in hotels than I have ever had the dubious pleasure of doing so before now. However, just to be clear, I did not drive myself across America. The route outlined above was shared between several Greyhound Bus rides, and what is left of the great Amtrak rail network, as well as the afore mentioned car hire.

Over the coming weeks and months I will begin to process the encounters, the highlights (and low-lights), and the hotel stays, and try to encapsulate my experiences via this blog. I have thousands of photographs to sort through, discard or enhance and utilise here, and more hours of video footage than I can ever hope to examine, edit, shape and put to good use in some way, shape or form. But what’s a traveller to do? The answer I guess, is to take each story as it comes and try to extract the heart out of each experience, and write about it in a way that will be of interest and use to readers who stumble on this blog.

My Dream Vacation

~ So here’s a question for you.

If you had $100,000 and six months to spend it on your dream vacation, where would you go, and what would you do?

And just so you know: No, I don’t have a spare one hundred grand, either for you or myself, but I did think it would be an interesting intellectual exercise to fantasize about my dream vacation for a couple of hours (yes, I know, I do have too much time on my hands). Oh, and just for the record, I am not an intellectual!

Alright… I’ll go first. Let me see…

First up, starting from here (here being Adelaide, Australia), I would travel by merchant ship to the USA, island hopping my way across the Pacific Ocean. Stops along the way would include New Zealand, Tahiti, and Mexico, before disembarking in San Francisco.

From San Francisco, armed with a copy of Jamie Jensen’s Road Trip USA I would begin my long dreamed about road trip across the United States – first down the Pacific coast to Los Angeles, San Diego, and Tucson, Arizona catching up with relatives along the way (making sure I visited Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon of course).

Most serious road trip enthusiasts dream about driving the length of the famed Route 66 at least once in their lives, and I’m no exception. From Tucson, it wouldn’t be to hard to head north again and join Route 66 at Flagstaff. However, being a ‘completist’ (is that even a real word?), if I was going to drive Route 66, I would have to head back to LA and start the journey proper from there.

Now those of you familiar with the song, Route 66, will immediately realize that would be doing it all wrong. According to the song, Route 66 “Winds from Chicago to LA,” but do I really want to fly or drive all the way to Chicago, just so I can spend several weeks singing the lines of the song every mile along the route in the proper order they were written?

Of course, you are right. Am I a completist or aren’t I?

Ok, so I’d fly to Chicago and drive Route 66 north to south (or to be more precise – north to south-west), and make sure I have lots of great adventures along the way. Unfortunately, that means I am back where I started – sort of. I now have to get from LA to New York City. I could fly, but where’s the fun in that? So after resting my numb bum in Los Angeles for a few days, it’s back into the hire car for the long drive across the American south and up the east coast to New York.

After spending a couple of weeks in New York City, it’s on to the Republic of Ireland – via Niagara Falls and Canada. Well, why not?

Now, relax. I don’t mean to bore you with every stop along the way, so here in some sort of order is the rest of my fantasy vacation: From Ireland I would go to England, France, Spain, and Morocco. The north African leg of my trip also takes in Senegal, Mali, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt. From there it’s on to Turkey, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands. Now it’s time to rug up and head north into Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. By train we cross the Russian steppes to Mongolia and China. We’re on the homeward stretch now. Just a few more countries left (Japan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Thailand) before finally setting down in Darwin, Australia.

From Darwin I would drive back to Adelaide the ‘long way’. That is, via Kakadu, Alice Springs, Mount Isa, Brisbane, and then down along east coast passing through Sydney, Melbourne, and finally on to Adelaide.

Whew, that is a sum total of 33 countries in six months, and more miles than I care to think about.

Is it possible? Would $100,000 be enough?

Hey, what do I know? This is a fantasy vacation after all. A pipe dream. A flight of the imagination. A meditation on the possible – or if you insist, the impossible. But who knows? Maybe, just maybe, if I can’t do the whole trip I can do parts of it. Maybe I don’t have to complete the whole journey in six months. What if I only do the ocean voyage and the road trip? That would be a good start in anyone’s book – wouldn’t it? I can always tackle other parts of the journey later.

So what does your dream vacation involve?

Don’t hold back. Let your imagination run wild, and let me know via the comments section below. Alternatively, you could write a longer piece and send it to me. With your permission I might republish it here as part of my blog.

Go on, share the dream.

New Hotel Opens Inside Monument Valley

~ On my next trip to the United States, I am heading south to see one of the greatest iconic American landscapes of all: Monument Valley.

The natural formations of Monument Valley, the ones we have seen countless westerns and TV commercials, stand so close that you feel like you can reach out and press your hand to them…the Mittens - left thumb, right thumb, and the third monolith Mitchell's Butte, rising to the right. There is an amazing panorama with colours so vivid that it looks like a Hollywood stage set. The landscape is painted with the colours that that you find in Navajo art and jewellery: a turquoise blue sky, white clouds, and a vast desert rich in reds sprinkled with green and jet black accents.

All this, and more, is said to be the view from a guestroom balcony at the newly opened VIEW Hotel in Monument Valley.This one-of-a-kind hotel is big news for tourists but even bigger news for the Navajo Nation. This is the first hotel ever built on Navajo Tribal Park land, in the very first Tribal Park ever established, and this year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the park.

Ray Russell, Director of Navajo Parks & Recreation, says "The VIEW Hotel is a groundbreaking event for the Navajo Nation. The location was selected because it is adjacent to the Park Visitors Centre which has served tourists for over 50 years. This project is our first step to utilize the tourism resources of the Navajo Nation in a manner similar to the US Department of Interior when they have partnered with the private sector to improve and provide visitor services in National Parks. The workforce constructing the hotel is over 90% Navajo Nation members. The hotel, restaurant and store will eventually provide jobs for over 100 people.”

Jobs in the Navajo are big news. The Navajo Nation (over 27,000 square miles, the size of West Virginia) has a staggering unemployment rate of nearly 50%. Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley says “Job creation on Tribal land means economic opportunity but also translates into cultural preservation. When family members can find employment close to their traditional homes they stay connected with their culture and their language. This fosters an environment where traditional ways of the Navajo people can be passed from generation to generation. The VIEW Hotel in Monument Valley will provide opportunity in a very needed region.”

The VIEW Hotel is 100% family owned and operated – Armanda Ortega of the Kiy`anníí (Towering House) Clan welcomes the opportunity to host guests from around the world in a place of beauty and spiritual importance to the Navajo people. “Our hotel is designed with respect for the sacred setting in which it is located – it has been designed to exist in harmony with this unique land. Every guestroom has a view directly facing the Mittens and the exterior of the hotel will be from a colour palate of the red earth that surrounds us.”

The hotel is an environmentally friendly design with a low contour that conforms to the mesa overlooking the valley. The VIEW goes beyond what have become standard eco-friendly building practices using low-flow water devices, extra insulation, windows with energy efficient values, and fluorescent lighting. There are operable windows in public spaces including the soaring two story lobby that allows for natural air flow for energy efficient cooling.

Every guest in the 90 room VIEW Hotel will have a private balcony that faces the famous panorama of the Mittens and the great desert expanse. You can actually see four states from The VIEW which is located adjacent to the Tribal Park Visitors Center in Arizona – the formations in Utah stand to your left, the Mittens are in Arizona directly in front of you, and the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado rise in the distance. The third floor Star View rooms combine the vista of the majestic formations with an unobstructed view of the stars above.