After we finished the Mystery Valley tour, we dropped off the families from Switzerland and Buffalo, New York near the lodge and proceeded into Monument Valley. The storm clouds were still all around us, and Ruth wanted to go back to the RV because she does not like thunderstorms.
But we trudged on into the park with the honeymooning couple from Rome and our guide at the reins of the truck.
According to the tour map, about 300 Navajo live full-time in Monument Valley. The first thing that hits you when you drive around Monument Valley, after having visited national parks administered by the U.S. government, is that there are houses pretty much anywhere someone wants to build one. It's pretty difficult to get a picture of some of the formations without getting a house or building in it. It just seems odd.
The second thing that hits you after you pass the Visitor Center is that the roads in this Tribal Park are not paved. Not even the official 17 mile drive that anyone can drive in their own vehicle. The roads are red dirt.
We stopped briefly in the Visitor Center to use the restrooms. Jeff looked for a sticker for the RV and picked up t-shirts for himself and Henry. Then we waited for the Italian couple to come back to the truck to head into the valley.
We weren't on the red dirt road for 10 minutes before Jeff mocked my original plan to have us drive the road in our Jeep the night before. We would have never gotten the dirt off the Jeep if we had. As it was, we were all coated in a light layer of red dust already. My black backpack was red on top, and Ruth's camera got some dust in it and the shutter wouldn't open anymore.
Not only was the road dirt, but the first leg of it descended in curvy switchbacks with no guardrails. It was like the Wild West - cars and trucks were just going back and forth with no thought to an imaginary line dividing the road into two lanes. It would be one thing to drive it in a Jeep, but there were people driving regular cars on it. Silliness.
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| Left and Right Mitten |
Unfortunately, the clouds and passing showers made taking photographs difficult on the tour. But no matter the weather, the valley is full of things to look at in every direction that you look.
We drove by various formations and our guide gave us their names. There's Left Mitten and Right Mitten, Big Indian, Brigham's Tomb, Three Sisters, and many more. Our first stop was at John Ford's Point, a place that gives you a view of Monument Valley that John Ford had when he first came here to film the Searchers. There's a man who rides a horse out to the point and stays there for awhile, and people can walk out and have their picture with him or on the horse. We just settled for taking a picture of him with the valley as a background.
Also at John Ford's Point are some Navajo people selling jewelry and other handmade items. Ruth and I bought bracelets from a woman who is a college student studying political science. She had many beautiful pieces, and I wish I had hit the ATM before the tour so I could have gotten a few more things. Ruth's bracelet was three dollars and mine was four.
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| Coming out of the hogan |
The gray clouds continued to follow us, but it wasn't raining. Our next stop took us off the main road into an area only Navajo people can go on. We visited a hogan owned by a 95 year old Navajo woman named Susie. She was born on the reservation and lived her all her life. She speaks no English, only the Navajo language. Susie had five kids and between her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, she had about 73 descendants. She showed us how Navajo women make yarn out of sheep's wool that they then weave into rugs. Susie showed us how Navajo women put their hair up in buns. Navajo men and women traditionally do not cut their hair because they believe that will cut their life knowledge. Men and women wear their hair buns differently - one higher than the other. Ruth didn't want to get her hair done, but the Italian woman let Susie brush her hair with a buffalo grass brush and put her hair in a bun with twine. It looked very nice.
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Before we left, Jeff and Henry got their picture with Susie and donated a few dollars to help her feed her animals. It's probably difficult for a 95 year old Navajo woman to earn money when she can no longer make rugs or jewelry to sell. There's no social security checks being sent there.
The hogan itself was a pretty interesting building. There are no nails or screws used - only wood and the mud from the red dirt. On the inside, the wood layout creates a beautiful pattern. The mud on the outside makes it blend in to the landscape. The female hogan has nine main vertical beams that represent the nine months a woman is pregnant. The doors of the hogan always face east to welcome the rising sun. There's a hole at the top to let heat out, and there's a wood stove in the center of the hogan and the pipe of the stove comes out of the top hole as well. The floor is dirt. We don't think Susie lives in the hogan anymore, because there's a house near the hogan and the animal pens.
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| Waterfalls in the rainstorm |
While we were in the hogan, we heard thunder. Ruth wanted to get back in the truck and get going. Our guide then took us past more formations and a few arches. And then it started to rain. At first it was a light rain, but then it really started coming down. When it really started to pour, we were stopped near an arch. The guide took the steps out so we could exit the truck, but none of us moved. First, we didn't want to get soaked, and second, if you pointed your camera up to photograph the arch, the raindrops would land on the lens. He looked a little perplexed at us not getting out of the truck.
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Horses in the rain, waterfalls
in the background
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The wind picked up and started blowing the rain in on the side of the truck that the Italians and Jeff and Ruth were on. Jeff's back got soaked. We asked the guide to drop the plastic sides to keep the rain out. Earlier, when the rain wasn't so hard, he offered to do it but the Italians said no. Lesson learned - listen when your Navajo guide suggests putting the rain shield down.
The cool thing about seeing this area in the rain was how quickly waterfalls formed on the rock formations. There was even a waterfall coming through an arch. If we hadn't been there in the rain, we wouldn't have seen it. We also saw horses hanging out in the rain, soaking it in.
Now, it was thundering and pouring rain and water was coming in everywhere. I wrapped my camera under my shirt to keep it dry and tried videotaping as we drove through the monsoon. The truck was bumping around rivers that used to be roads and at times, I think our driver was making his own roads to get through. We were sliding in our seats trying to hang on. Ruth was holding onto Jeff, but Henry just sat in the front seat enjoying the whole ride. He barely got wet sitting in the front row. He would look out at the washed out roads in front of us and then look at us going "wow!" I thought for sure we were going to get stuck in the mud.
We came upon an empty truck parked by an arch, and wondered what happened to the people. We spotted them hiding from the rain under the rock formation, while water was pouring from the arch into a mini-lake underneath it.
Our guide was hauling it through the valley. I am not kidding when I say the road was now a flowing river. But he did a great job moving us through the park. We passed non-four wheel drive cars driving through the mess and wondered how they would make it. Ahead of us, one oncoming car stopped so the driver could talk to the driver of a car in front of us, and after we passed, the car made a U-turn and got behind us. About now is when I realized that the drive isn't a 17 mile loop, so we were going out the way we came in. Which meant we had to climb up that curvy switchback, but now in the rain.
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| Brand new river we drove across |
But before I could really worry about that, we had to pass across a little river formed by the rainwater. The two cars in front of us stopped side by side and one woman got out to wade into the river to see how deep it was before driving through. Before she could get in, our guide just plowed on through it. He never hesitated a bit. And then it was up the curvy hill to get out of the valley. Again - it's a dirt road, now a mud road. No guardrails, and no line to keep cars on either side. It's a free for all - and even more so with people in cars without four wheel drive trying to get up or down the hill. The driver of one car looked at us in the truck and I waved for him to go back. Stop the madness and get on a tour truck. It's not worth the damage to your car.
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View as we were leaving the valley,
muddy roads below |
Halfway up the hill, the driver stopped and pulled around so we could get a good look at the Mittens and a few other formations on our way out. There was no pullout there - he just put the truck in a spot where other cars could get around us. The view was great, because some clouds were moving out, but there was still come mist and cloudiness to give the valley a mysterious look. I snapped a bunch of pictures, and then he started backing up the truck. He kept backing up and backing up and I thought - great, we're going to slide off the backside of this road. Then he finally stopped, and over the microphone said: "That was scary." And then he kept plugging up the hill.
We left the valley and returned to the campground. All of us were soaked through on the bottom except for Henry, who was mainly dry. Ruth had cheered up now that we were out of thunderstorm danger, and we talked about the things we liked most about the tour. Even with the rain and the sometimes scary parts of the drive, we all loved it. Totally worth the money to do it.
My favorite story was about two men who came out to Cripple Creek to join the gold rush. They didn't know anything about mining, so the way they decided where to stake their claim was by one guy throwing his hat up in the air. They staked their claim where the hat fell. If you look in the picture to the left, you'll see a thin vertical shaft sticking up in the center of the picture. That's their mine. Eventually, their gold mine got them $10 million dollars. Talk about luck...
