Mystery Valley Tour

Monument Valley is such an interesting place.  The formations that look like monuments are scattered through a valley surrounded by mesas and mountains made up of red rocks withs some other colors mixed in.  If you look carefully, you can see how some of the formations were probably part of bigger mesas, but either water or wind or other forces carved them out.

We took a tour of Monument Valley and Mystery Valley on Sunday.  Henry's going to give a review of some of it, since yesterday was probably one of the most adventurous days of his life.  But while he works on his post, I'll share that we thought we were going on an all-day Jeep tour of the area to learn more about it, but instead, we had a big adventure from beginning to end.

Our Navajo guide picked us up at the campground at 8:30 a.m.  He was an older man with his long black hair in a ponytail.  He wore a cowboy hat with feathers in the brim, and a red, long sleeved dress shirt with a vest and jeans.  Neither Jeff nor I remember his name, but the kids think his Indian name meant "cheetah."

The tour vehicle looks like a pick-up truck that's been outfitted with rows of school bus seats in the back part.  There were about six rows of seats, two people on each side.  The truck had a roof, but the sides were open.  No seat belts.

We left the campground and picked up some more people at the main lodge.  In our tour group was a mother and son from Buffalo, NY - our only other Americans for the tour.  There was a honeymooning couple from Rome and a family of four from Switzerland to round out our group.

We drove out behind the campground and the guide showed us where the people who have no running water come to fill plastic barrels and take them home.  That's the first dose of reality into the lives of the people who live on the reservation.  Soon, we were off the paved road and onto dirt roads that only Navajo residents can drive on. 

We were warned that you eat a lot of dust on this tour because of the sandy, dusty roads and it was clear from the start that we were going to get dirty.  Some parts of the road was hard packed red dirt, and some were like driving on a sand dune.  Did I mention there were no seat belts?

Our guide was a quiet man, not one of those chatty tour guides with lots to say.  He pointed out certain rock formations that had been given names based on what people thought they looked like, like Sleeping Teddy Bear, Fred and Barney, and the Alligator. 

The guide also pointed out handmade houses called hogans (ho-gone) that the Navajo people have lived in for a log time.  They're made with wood and sealed around with mud and look like a dome with a hole on the top.  The hole lets the heat out.  In addition to the hogans, we saw other types of housing  ranch houses and trailers. 



Henry inside an Anasazi house

The guide said that in addition to there being no water system to bring running water to all the people on the reservation, many people do not have electricity either.  I saw a house with a propane tank outside, so that may be one energy source they have.

We drove farther out into the area the guide called Mystery Valley.  It's called Mystery Valley because the Anasazi people, who lived two thousand years ago, once lived in the valley but then left and never returned.  No one knows where they went afterward, which is why it's called Mystery Valley. 

As we were driving, we saw cows and horses grazing in open fields.  The guide said that families brand their cows so they know who's belongs to who.  Some of the horses are wild, and some are owned by the Navajo.  Once you are in the reservation area, you don't see any fences other than the one around the outside of the reservation.  Animals roam free.  Some houses have pens and corrals for animals, but the ones that graze can go wherever they want.

After we got into Mystery Valley, our guide stopped the truck and invited us to join him in looking at an arch.  We climbed up the large sandstone rocks and around to the other side of the formation, where we saw an arch in the shape of a teardrop.  If you look through the arch, you can see some of the Monument Valley formations through the middle.  Awesome. 

Then the guide showed us around the other side of the formation to take us to an Anasazi house in the rocks.  Our group all went along, but there came a part where I got scared because of the combination of heights and drop-off.  So I decided to stay there and wait for the group to come back.  Ruth stayed with me - she didn't really want to, but I'm glad she did.  We waited a bit and then went back to the truck to sit.  Shortly, two more people joined us and said the hike got pretty scary so they backed out too.

Now is a good time to mention that the brochure for the tour only said you had to wear close toed shoes like sneakers or hiking boots - no sandals.  There was no mention of hiking or warnings for people with fear of heights or medical conditions that might make hiking up rock ledges dangerous.  There was also no mention of not wearing a long sundress, as our woman from Rome was wearing.  Being a dress made sliding down boulders on your backside even more challenging.

While we sat in the bus, the four of us chatted about our vacations and where we were from.  Then, I saw Jeff and Henry come walking out from behind the rocks.  When they got on the bus, Jeff told me I made the right decision to bail out.  At one point, he said they were walking on a narrow ledge and had to hold onto rocks and shimmy across.  They went up into the Anasazi houses, which involved crawling through two holes, one smaller than the other.  He joked that rides at Disney World have bigger warnings than this tour.  But both he and Henry loved every minute of it.

We drove past some more formations, and then came to another stop.  The guide showed us some Anasazi rock carvings on a large sandstone boulder.  I love looking at them.  This boulder had carvings of sheep and people.  But again, this was not the only purpose of the stop.  He then led the group around a corner where we could see an Anasazi rock dwelling up high in the sandstone.  He took most of the group (minus the four who bailed on the first hike) straight up a huge sandstone boulder and out of sight.  We then saw one of the people on the top of the rock formation way above us.  I said to the boy's mother, who was next to me:  "If I see my son up there, I'm going to kill him."  Jeff and Henry were up there, but they stayed away from the edge.  We filmed them up there and videotaped them coming down.  Henry had to come down on his bottom because it's relatively flat and steep.  Jeff said the guide walked like a mountain goat on the rocks - no effort at all, and he never put his hands down to help himself get by.

Then we were back in the truck and off to two other stops where Jeff and Henry climbed up the rocks.  Sometimes, it was hard to watch because if they slipped, it would not have gone well.  But Henry enjoyed it.

We stopped for lunch near the Room of Hands.  The Anasazi not only carved petroglyphs into rock, they also painted images on the rock, which are called pictographs.  The Room of Hands is a section of the wall of a huge mesa where hundreds of hand prints are painted.  There are also paintings of people.  There are some ruins of low building structures there as well.  Our guide dropped us off and let us take pictures while he got the fire started for lunch.   

We had hamburgers cooked over a wood fire, with chips, fruit and cookies.  It was delicious.  As we were eating, it started to rain.  The clouds had been accumulating all morning, and now some were pretty dark.  It wasn't a heavy rain, so we just stayed near a tree, which blocked some of the drops from hitting us.  But toward the end of lunch, it started raining a bit harder.  We finished our lunch and got back on the road.  In the distance we could see some lightning.  Ruth was not amused.  It looked as if there were two storms fronts out there - one to the front of us and one to the right in Monument Valley.  Where we were driving it was still sunny, and we hoped the storms would blow and get out of our way.

We finished up our tour of Mystery Valley and headed back toward Monument Valley to start the second part of our tour.