Monument Valley and Vicinity

As we continued our way north, we spent a day or so in the Monument Valley area of the Navaho Nation. Karen had snagged a camping spot for a couple of nights there, so we were pretty excited. The tent site had epic views, but unfortunately, the spots were almost on top of each other. We did the drive through the valley in the late afternoon, and got up close and personal with some of the buttes and spires, then watched the sunset. Beautiful! Since we were in the middle of nowhere, Tom got up in the middle of the night to try some night-sky photography (with very limited success). And he got up again to catch the sunrise. Once again, quite beautiful. After an early morning hike down around one of the buttes on Wildcat Trail, we decided to leave a day early, since (a) we'd pretty much done what we wanted to do there, (b) in was quite hot, and (c) the camping situation was less than ideal.

On our way out of the area, we made a quick stop for a photo-op at Gooseneck State Park on our way to Valley of the Gods (a scaled-down and much less crowded version of Monument Valley). But, at literally the last second, Tom decided to head up the semi-perilous Mokey Dugway ... which is basically a steep, unpaved road that switchbacks 1200' from the valley floor to the top of Cedar Mesa above. Very serious consequences if you stray from the roadbed. Once at the top, we went a few miles to Muley Point for a panoramic view of the area (quite nice!), before heading back down and through Valley of the Gods.