We’re Working Pretty Hard at this Fun Thing

On Thursday we drove 319 miles, which is the farthest we’ve driven since we left Arkansas. We were up early and left the campground at 6:40.

The drive went well, into Arizona, back into Utah, into Arizona again and arriving in Bluff, Utah before 2:00 PM. Still it was a long day and Bud had a bit of a headache, so today I thought we’d just go about 5 miles down the road to Sand Island to view petroglyphs.

We found two short trails along the cliffs along the San Juan River (the same river we were camped near in Bloomfield, NM in the beginning of May) both of which had some nice panels of petroglyphs.

Signs there said they were from 300 to 3000 years old. We could tell some were really old, but they didn’t show up well enough to photograph.

When we were getting ready to leave there, Bud asked if we’d like to continue west to Monument Valley. Well OKAY, if he was willing to make the hour drive we were willing to go along.

Monument Valley is a Navajo Tribal Park. To me it was like the inverse of the Grand Canyon. Instead of a plain with a deep canyon eroded through it, you are on a plain where everything has eroded except these towering rock structures. The park is 91,696 acres. It has a 15 mile gravel road through it that winds around the mesas, buttes and spires.

I struggled, as I have been all through the southwest, to capture the grandeur of it. Here I am at the base of one end of Cly Butte. Were I to walk up to the base I would not be tall enough to reach up to the lowest crack in the cliff.

This is the view when I turned around. The spires in the distance, probably well over a mile away, are the Three Sisters.

This is a closer view of the Three Sisters.

I had Adler climb up on one of the smaller boulders at the base of one end of the Spearhead Mesa.

Here Bud and Matey are resting in the shade of a huge boulder at the same end of Spearhead Mesa.

At the overlook at the Navajo Code Talker Outpost you can see how a more erosion resistant layer is creating flat-topped columns.

These huge columns, which were still quite distant, were two formations, one called the Totem Pole and the other Yei Bi Chei. Notice the sand dunes in front of them.

These dunes, not far from the Totem Pole, were easily as tall as a two story house. Adler really wanted to walk out and climb them but you aren’t allowed to hike on your own and the dunes were probably a mile away.

We drove out, leaving West and East Mitten and Merrick Buttes and all of Monument Valley. We got back to the trailer at 3 after another busy day. And tomorrow we need to leave here at 7:30 to get to our tour on time at Mesa Verde National Park. Whew!