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| Monument Valley, AZ |
This is Reg's day to get silly. Kate and Cindy have promised to drive so he settles into the back seat with a few cool ones having done all the driving so far. We get away very early from Page having awakened Cindy with a phone call —she persists in saying that she "never slept a wink". But we're on the road at about 7:00 leaving our Inn at Lake Powell and the town of Page armed with Mormon coffee, "This isn't coffee, it's barely brown water!!" Our plans are to have breakfast at Goulding's Lodge, a Fred Harvey tour lodge at the edge of the of Monument Valley. That's near the "Four Corners" (where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet). Goulding's Lodge is in Utah while Monument Valley is across the state line in Arizona.
We're traveling in the Navajo reservation and while there are lots of people with roadside stands selling silver, pottery, rugs and other trinkets there aren't too many gas stations or other places with a "pissoir". Kate and Cindy love the scenery — the sheep, the craigy heights, barren washes — but they'd really like a loo. When the pain becomes unbearable we all pull over and "do our duty" behind little juniper trees only big enough to count as garden ornaments. At Goulding our waiter warns us to be very careful when doing so for the wet weather has made for lots of snakes and scorpions. Yes, that would be a painful bathroom break!
The landscape we travel through is mostly pasture land for sheep, goats and the occasional horses. Although there are a few fences the animals do escape and you need to be careful when driving. Especially so since the shifting sands mean that fences are often buried or sometimes left high and dry. On several occasions we encounter livestock on the road.
The Lodge at Goulding, probably the only accommodation for 50 to100 miles, is our brunch destination. It's at Monument Valley but set back a way along a canyon across from the gateway to the valley. The rooms are built into rows along the side of the canyon wall. Each has a beautiful view of the old west landscape of Monument Valley. Over breakfast, or best so far with really neat biscuits that seem to have been a staple for the old timers, we watch airplanes arrive on a dirt landing strip. Our waiter (we seem to have had several servers) tells us the planes come from Page, where we had started out some two and a half hours ago, and are mostly booked by the Japanese and Germans. There are lots of these tourists but I think it's an exaggeration. People used to talk about the "ugly American" now it's the "ugly German" and "ugly Japanese". We're the "ugly Canadians".
At brunch Kate and Cindy talked to a tourist from England; she is awed by the distances and space. We're not so awed, in fact the space is filled with a lot of farm homes: often trailers but sometimes log hogan's, or more substantial homes, and, too often, only tar paper shacks. But the natives we've met, albeit briefly, who live here are friendly and conversant. They have well-deserved pride in their land; e.g. when we say how beautiful it is they say "thank you". Bear in mind this is their land. This is the Navajo nation. Monument Valley is a tribal park although we think, perhaps wrongly, that they may receive federal money as a "National Monument", c.f. national parks. [Ps. They don't, it's native land controlled by the Navajo Nation.]
In any case, we decide to tour the park ourselves rather than take a guided tour in an open bus or truck. Inside the park we are thankful that we did: on the one hand there's the insidious dust. However, on the other hand, we're sorry we didn't given the terrible roads. E.g., we have to make a second run at one hill where we're bogged down in sand.
There are lots of trails through the valley for cars and four wheel drive vehicles. At a couple of places Indians pose for pictures; we pay to take photos of a couple of children with mesas in the background but we could have taken a photo with an Indian cowboy. Reg took a posed picture with Cindy and Kate that he titles "Two butts and a butte".
Throughout the valley there are people who actually live there! Why beats me given the roads, heat and lack of water. There are no rivers or creeks that flow here with any permanence. However, the winter had lots of snow and earlier they had three days of gentle rain. For the moment that means that the ground looks quite green — not so green come July I'm sure.
The ground dust is red as are the sandstone buttes and towering pillars and mesas. The ground has certain feel to it. Sort of like snow with a sleet crust on top. It's hard but breaks to reveal the dusty interior. Everything becomes covered in red dust; especially your shoes from walking in it.
We drive on to Chinle at Canyon de Chelly where we have a hotel reservation — thank God we did! There are only two hotels in town and both are completely full. We saw a couple looking for a room. They may have to drive to Albuquerque before finding one.
At the Lodge in Chinle, where we might have stayed, we book a reservation for a tour of the canyon tomorrow morning. Kate and Cindy are out to stretch their legs and also looking for a liquor store. Reg has finished his last beer and thirst. Our motel has a restaurant, he's hungry for dinner and a drink; it's 7:15, where are Kate and cindy?
Well, it turns out that you cannot buy liquor or beer or etc. on the Indian reservation including here in Chinle. It's a dry town, a dry county, a dry nation. The girls finally come back after confirming the above with the locals and at various shops.
The tired trio struck out to the only restaurant in town and had a pretty good meal (or at least good prices). Kate was going to have the meatloaf but was told it was "off" so she had home pork chops, Reg had a No. 1 Mexican Dinner, and Cindy had a "Navajo Taco" (taco fixings in Navajo fry bread). But we were thirsty. It's bad enough that the Morgan's are dry on Lake Powell and in Utah, why here as well?
Since things shut down at 9:00 p.m. in Chinle everyone went to bed in order to get up early for the tour of the canyon the next morning.
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