7:00am and an alarm wakes us. The time has gone ahead an hour now that we’re (just) in Utah and we are being picked up at 9:00am for our guided tour of the Monument Valley and backcountry. We enjoy a light breakfast and get ready to be out and about for a few hours.
Our guide arrives a little early so we climb into the rig and he takes us to the View hotel that sits at the entrance to the valley. Accessing the valley requires us to pay an $8/person tribal fee as the land is owned by the Navaho (Dineh) tribe. We pick up a few more passengers (visiting from France and Spain) and we head down into the valley.
The drive can be made using your own vehicle and although RVs are not allowed our campervan would have been permitted but as we will discover, the road is very rough and uneven. We are both very glad to have chosen to take a tour and we’re only just at the beginning.
The steep gravel and sand road flattens out at the bottom of the valley and you begin to realize the size of the sandstone mesas that are scattered about the valley. Some are over 1000’ in height.
The valley is most famous for being the filming location of early Hollywood westerns many of which were produced by John Ford such as Stagecoach (1939) and The Searchers (1956) both of which starred John Wayne. There is now a location within the valley named John Ford point.
All of the mesas in the valley have names, some are easy to understand their source such as ‘The Elephant’ or ‘Three Sisters’. Others require a bit of imagination to see what is evidently seen by others.
The tour takes us in the backcountry beyond the self-drive route to a tribal village where, in a traditional shelter called a ‘Hogan’ we are shown how rugs are woven from sheep’s wool that is sheared, washed, spun and colored by hand before being woven into intricately patterned rugs.
Lastly while in the backcountry we visit a few places to see huge holes or arches through the mesas created by millions of years of erosion. At our last stop, our guide plays his traditional wooden flute while we gaze at the sky through one of these massive holes. Quite magical.
Returning to the entrance to the valley, we notice that there are many more folks now self driving the roads and we see a few vans bumping along and we wonder if they have anything left in their cupboards. The tour was 3hrs long and cost us each $70USD, but we both feel that we got so much from it. We learned much from our guide about the history of the Dineh people and how living in a modern world has affected their way of life. If you visit, we recommend taking a tour.
The remainder of the day we spent at our campsite relaxing and planning the remaining days of our trip. Still more to come so keep checking back.
P.S. Yes, there is now red sand everywhere in the van.
Wow! Looks and sounds fabulous!!