The valley of Rocks

When approaching Monument Valley from Northeast on route 163, it seems to be mandatory to take a picture like this.

On the Arizona - Utah border, there is a place called Tse'Bii'Ndzisgaii, "The Valley of Rocks", one of the great natural wonders of Southwestern USA. The white man calls it Monument Valley. It is one of the most photographed places in the World, and has appeared in numerous movies, cartoons and games. That's no surprise, the sandstone formations look like Salvador Dali's feverish hallucinations, but they do exist, however difficult it is to believe in them.

Places like Monument Valley make a visitor - at least me - feel very, very small. The formation of the strange natural sandstone sculptures have taken millions of years, and not even stone is forever. What meaning can my temporal existence have compared to that?

"The mittens", left and right.

Monument Valley is administered by the Navajo Nation. From a visitor's point of view there is no significant difference to federally run national parks of the USA. There's an entrance fee and a visitor center and a small but nice museum with exhibitions on Monument Valley and Navajo history. The restaurant at the visitor center is less overpriced than I would have expected. There's also a shop where one can buy, among other things, art by Navajo artists, with a proof of authenticity. There's even a hotel within the Monument Valley area, but that was a bit too pricey for us, even though a sunrise and sunset seen from the balconies would, no doubt, been quite an experience.

We do not buy many souvenirs, but from Monument Valley we purchased this sand painting made by Navajo artist Anna Chee. In YouTube, there's a 1949 film about the making of a traditional sand painting (it's silent and the sand painting begins at 18:50, before that there are other interesting things like Monument Valley landscapes). 

In Navajo lands, there is a lot of very fine red sand. When it rains, the sand either turns to mud or flows away with the water. When we visited Monument Valley, it was baking under a merciless sun, but it had rained on the previous days. Conequently, the 17 mile gravel road in the valley had either turned to mud or flown away with the water, and we decided not to drive it. We did, however, visit the John Ford point, a vantage point named after the movie director known for his westerns.

Monument Valley has "played" the role of a foreign planet in many movies. No surprise.

In August 2015, as I wrote this, there was a miserable natural disaster going on near Monument Valley. More than 11 million liter (3 million US gallons) of waste water contaminated with heavy metals was accidentally released to San Juan river, to the north of Monument Valley. Many Navajo farmers rely for the river for irrigation water, and their crops are in danger when the water is unusable. Most of them are not particularly wealthy people to begin with, and their entire livelihood is endangered by the waste water spill.

We visited Monument Valley on June 15th 2015.