Monument Valley

If you have EVER watched a western, you have probably seen Monument Valley! So many westerns and other movies have been filmed here: Stagecoach, The Searchers, Cars, Forrest Gump, Transformers, How the West Was Won, The Lone Ranger, National Lampoon’s Vacation, Back to the Future III… The list goes on! Does this look familiar?

This is Forrest Gump Road, on the way to Monument Valley. Forrest stopped running on this road!

Monument Valley was AMAZING:

Monument Valley is part of the Navajo Nation. We drove the scenic road (the road is HORRIBLE!), and then took a tour with a Navajo guide. We were the only ones on the tour, which was nice because the tour vehicles are open trailers with rows of seats, pulled by a pick up. because it was just us, we got to sit in the truck instead of the trailer- a big win because it was cold and windy! Our guide, John, was interesting and explained that the name Navajo was given by the Mexicans, but they prefer to be call Dine’ which means The People.

Even though we had already driven the tour road, John pointed out some things we had missed:

This is called John Wayne’s Boot- can you see it?

We got to see some things that can only be seen with a guide, like visiting a traditional Hogan:

The woman who uses this as her place of business makes jewelry and weaves rugs and other wall-hangings. She is working on one that will take her a year to finish- no wonder they are not inexpensive!

When entering a Hogan you walk in a clockwise direction to show respect. the wooden frame was very intricate and amazing, and it was covered by the mud you see.

This is called The Eye (can you see the “lashes” at the top?)

We saw The Mittens:

And The Totem- ironic because the Navajo do not have totem poles:

We saw a balancing rock that was very cool:

John Wayne made several movies that were filmed in Monument Valley. We visited John Wayne’s Point, which is supposed to be his favorite view in Monument Valley: