Monument Valley

Monument Valley is an iconic American landscape. It's provided the setting for the Westerns of John Ford and other directors. Clark Griswold wandered around and nearly died here in National Lampoon's Vacation. It's provided the backdrop for innumerable print and TV ads for cigarettes, trucks, and other products.

Although parts of Monument Valley are plainly visible from U.S. Route 163, which runs to its north and west, I wanted more than a "drive-by" experience. I didn't want to risk damaging my little rental car on the dirt road of the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, so I decided to go on a guided tour. There are numerous tour firms operating in the park, but I did a little research and found that people seemed consistently pleased with the tours offered by Goulding's Lodge.

I secured a place on the 3.5-hour afternoon tour, and joined about 15 other tourists (mostly French and British) on a dusty, bone-rattling, and thoroughly amazing ride through the park.

As is the case with the Grand Canyon, it's pretty hard to take a badly composed photograph of Monument Valley; even the shots I took from the open-air tour van as we went over jolting stretches of road generally turned out well.

The Mittens (only one of which is pictured here) are probably among the most photographed geological features in America--and with good reason.

One of the perks of going on a guided tour of this sort is that you get to see portions of the park that are not open to people traveling on their own.

Had I been driving solo, incredible formations such as Big Hogan would have been off-limits to me; I was actually standing inside the formation when I took this picture!

I wouldn't have gotten to see these pteroglyphs, either. (FYI, the dark streaking that forms the background of these pteroglyphs and is evident on Big Hogan and other formations is desert varnish.)

One key reason that parts of the park are off-limits to unaccompanied travelers is that a sizeable number of Navajo people live in it. Our tour includes a stop at the hogan of an elderly Navajo woman who has lived in Monument Valley all her life. She cleaned wool, spun yarn, and demonstrated how she used her loom to weave rugs as our guide, a Navajo herself, explained what the woman was doing. Although our guide subtly emphasized this woman's agency (by, e.g., pointing out that all of her rugs are of her own design) and the importance and value of traditional lifeways, the fact that we tourists were traipsing in and out of this woman's very modest home drove home some hard truths about the disparities of wealth and power that exist in this world.

I anticipated that sunset at Monument Valley would be spectacular, and I was not disappointed.

As the light faded, the orange of the rocks was washed in soft lavenders, blues, and mauves.

After the landscape was dark, the clouds caught fire; unfortunately, compressing this photo so that it's suitable for Web posting dampens the flames a bit.

Go to Monument Valley if you can.

John Wayne slept here

After leaving Kayenta yesterday morning, I headed north. I was initially planning to tour Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park by myself, but I opted against pitting my rental car against the park's unpaved road. At the last moment, I stopped at Goulding's Lodge, which is in Utah just over the state line, and secured a slot on the afternoon tour.

Goulding's Lodge was established in 1921 by Harry and Leone "Mike" Goulding. It was initially a trading post that enabled the Navajo to exchange crops and goods that they produced for items that they needed and provided lodging to the travelers who sporadically visited the area. It is no longer owned by the family, and it has evolved into an international destination hotel, with an RV park and campground, gas station, and grocery store.

However, in the 1920's and 1930's, the lodge consisted of a modest two-story brick structure, which is now a museum chronicling the Gouldings' lives and work.

The upper floor of the building has been restored so that it looks much as it did when the Gouldings lived there. It's an incredibly homey, comfortable space; I can see why the Gouldings' friends and guests loved being there.

Much of the first floor is devoted to the Gouldings' place in film history. During the Great Depression, the Gouldings sought to aid their Navajo neighbors by luring Hollywood film productions to Monument Valley. They were particularly successful in capturing the attention of John Ford, who became a close friend and who used Monument Valley as the setting for many of his Westerns. Ford and his actors and crew stayed at Goulding's when on location in the area; Ford and the stars stayed in small rooms, and everyone else lived in tents.

John Wayne starred in many of Ford's films, and his presence looms large in the museum. One of the walls in the museum's Movie Room is devoted to Wayne himself, other portions of the exhibit concern individual films in which he starred, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon plays continuously.

Wayne's presence is also manifest in "John Wayne's Cabin," a small building to the rear of the museum that served as the exterior set of Wayne's office in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which was the only film ever shot on the property.

Given that I'm mildly fixated upon The Searchers, which may well be the most unsettling exploration of America's racial and sexual obsessions ever placed on film and which led me to Monument Valley in the first place, I'm really glad I made it to Goulding's.