The view from the playground and dog park looking south is nice too.
Monument Valley itself gets really busy in the middle of the day. So we decided we’d leave that drive to the next morning (which turned out to be a great plan). Instead, we drove north along Hwy 163 past parts of the classic Monument Valley views.
Everything changes as you drive along so you have to keep taking pictures.
And the formations look different after you pass them too.
This is a great place for somebody like me who is snap happy.
At the top of the pass is a classic view where they filmed a portion of Forest Gump. People stop to take photos and they were standing in the middle of the road. This is a main highway so it was not what I’d call a safe thing to do. And it’s not that they just stand out into the lane a bit. Nooooo, they stand out on the center line! And we saw them doing it all 3 times we drove through. Totally crazy.
We continued on to the little town of Mexican Hat which is named after this rock formation. Can you see the guy’s little head with his HUGE sombrero?
We drove a ways further to an area called The Valley of the Gods. A gravel/dirt road (not recommended for regular cars but we saw some) takes you on a loop through this BLM area. The first stop of the ‘tour’ is a formation called the 7 Sailors. I guess the 7th guy is around the other side because I could only count 6 of them.
We stopped for a moment and I took a panorama shot of the area looking northward.
With some difficulty we could recognize the Setting Hen formation from the drawing on the map.
From then on we decided we’d just enjoy the view—which is what the little guidebook we’d picked up suggested.
Who knows, maybe this was the setting hen.
They have dispersed camping here and there were all sorts of trailers, 5th wheels and RVs parked in little open areas along the way. Neither us of would have taken the Airstream out this road but hey ,we did a lot of dirt roads our first year or so before we decided it was just too hard on the trailer. So we understand the adventure and the views that can draw you to a place like this.
The formations aren’t as grand as Monument Valley but we really enjoyed how few cars there were and what great shape the road was in. What few cars there were mostly were driving slowly and there were enough turn outs to get out of the way of anyone who wanted to go faster.
I always love seeing formations where you can see all the layers that were laid down over the eons.
This formation looks a lot like a fortress to me.
I’m very fond of these formations that have fingers pointing skyward.
And so you get to see a lot of them with me behind the lens.
There were Sego Lilies (Calochortus nuttallii) in bloom in big swathes.
We’ve seen a lot of Sego Lilies on this trip and in each area they are a little different both in color and in the details of their centers. Here they were all pink.
Here’s yet another pointy formation.
And yet another fortress-like formation.
We stopped to change drivers and I got out and took photos of Notch-leaf Phacelia (Phacelia crenulata).
Red-dome Blanketflower (Gaillardia pinnatifida).
Large-flower Onion (Allium macropetalum).
And Fineleaf Yucca (Yucca angustissima).
Here are a couple of domes where their topknots have eroded away mostly.
Then we came to a nice example of Southwestern Pricklypoppy (Argemone pleiacantha).
We came around a bend and there was The Lady in the Tub. She was so distinctive, even I could figure it out.
From around the bend she turns into a Balancing Rock.
When we finished our lovely drive we headed back to Monument Valley and I stopped at the top of the hill to take my Forest Gump photo—and no I did not stand in the middle of the road to do it.
Farther along near home there was another turn out.
Here’s a close up of the formation on the left. I love the very thin ‘fins’ like the one in the middle.
We settled in back at the trailer and shortly before sunset the formations to the east lit up with wonderful orange light.
Even the big mesa lit up.
The next morning we were in line to pay our $20 entry fee at Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park before 9 am. The road through the park is dirt and thank goodness they don’t allow RVs or trailers on it. As it is, it gets a lot of hard usage every day so it wasn’t in great shape. We took it slow and enjoyed ourselves.
You start up on the mesa top and then go DOWN quickly. About halfway down we stopped to take a photo of the view—there were Russian ladies taking selfies in front of us.
The West Mitten on the left and the East Mitten in the center are two of the signature formations in the park.
There was Pale Evening-primrose (Oenothera pallida) in bloom.
Rosemary-mint (Poliomintha incana).
And Monument Valley Milkvetch (Astragalus monumentalis).
We got a great view of the East Mitten from the Merrick Butte Overlook.
There was Navajo Yucca (Yucca baileyi) in bloom.
And Blackbrush (Coleogyne ramosissima).
And of course you get a view of Merrick Butte too—in this case with lots of yuccas.
The 3 Sisters reign at the end of this long mesa.
And Elephant Butte fills the view to the south.
There were patches of our old friend Notch-leaf Phacelia (Phacelia crenulata).
In fact there were huge swathes of it around the bend.
The 3 Sisters stand tall as you get closer.
We took the turn-off to John Ford Point. Ford filmed many Westerns here and this was his favorite panorama view.
For a fee, they’d dress you up with a headband and put you on a horse to have your photo taken with the view. The horse had the perfect coloring to go with the landscape.
We drove on to the Totem Pole Viewpoint. This is the view looking back from where we’d come.
Here’s a close up of those same nifty formations.
I couldn’t resist taking this photo of the yuccas and the mesa (or maybe it’s a butte, I don’t know).
We drove on a short distance to Sand Springs Overlook where you get a much better view of the Totem Pole and Yei Bi Chei, the cluster of spires next to it. Clearly the Navajo did not name the Totem Pole since totem poles are made by the NW Coastal Indians but hey, it was used in a number of John Wayne movies so what do you expect? Turns out the last time someone climbed it was when they filmed the Eiger Sanction back in 1979.
You pass Spearhead Mesa on your way to Artists’ Point.
Here you get a great panorama view looking mostly northward.
There are lots of different angles to get views from.
Even the view that’s behind the viewpoint is pretty impressive.
There was lots of Stansbury's Cliffrose (Purshia stansburyana) in bloom all along the drive.
The map we had was a little confusing but it didn’t take long for us to realize that this formation was The Thumb.
The next overlook was what is called The North Window which gives you a great view to the north.
I followed a short trail southward around a bend and got a great view of Artists’ Point.
Here’s a view from that trail looking back to the parking area.
As we completed the loop portion of the road we came back past the field of notch-leaf phacelia and I had to find a place to park and hike back to take a photo.
The tour jitneys hooted and hollered at me as they bumped by (that’s how most folks see the valley). But I persevered.
The two-way road back to the Visitor’s Center was really busy by this point. It was full of cars (driving too fast) and tour jitneys and even a big bus.
We found a place to park at the Visitor’s Center and I of course had to take a few more photos from the lip of the valley.
Here’s East Mitten again.
West Mitten.
And Merrick Butte.
From the front deck of the Visitors Center you get a great view looking south. You can see the cars out on the road below.
And just to the left you get a view eastward where you can see the Mittens and the road as it goes by.
We took a turn through the gift shop which has the usual tourist stuff plus a lot of high-end local Native American pottery and jewelry. There’s a motel here on the lip of the valley and a restaurant so many of the tour groups stay here and then take the jitney tours. By mid-day it was a pretty wild place and we were glad we had come early.
When we got back to the trailer, I stopped and took a photo of the Black-Locust “Purple Robe” (Robinia “Purple Robe”) that was growing in the campsite next to us.
Here’s a close-up of the yummy flowers.
We’ve seen these along Hwy 395 along the Nevada-California border so they are clearly drought tolerant and can take the cold.
Again that evening the sun lit up the formations to the east.
This certainly makes up for any lack of sunset.
It was even pretty to the northeast.
Monument Valley is spectacular looking and we’re both glad we visited. But it’s not a restful place. It’s full of tourists and an energy that is not conducive to contemplation of the gorgeous views.
In addition, we only had 1 bar on our Verizon phones (useless) and the WiFi at the park didn’t work well at all. This extended the News Fast that began at Canyon de Chelly which was actually quite restful.