The day after Christmas Margie & I set off for Monument Valley, it's something we've wanted to do for years, but with elderly parents we feel we should be around. I was going to have us go to the UK, spend Christmas with mother, who is 87, but the air fares were truly appalling! Margie's dad is 86, but is busy with poker, bridge, pinochle, shuffle board etc, and seemed to be quite happy to spend New Years Eve alone, so off we went. It's 425 miles from the house to the View Hotel, on the Arizona/Utah border, we set off at 7:00 am and were there by just after 2:00 pm. Check in, it seemed, was 4:00 pm, so we sat in the car park and looked at the view. My video camera does time lapse, so I set up to catch dancing shadows, and wandered around and took some stills. Monday morning I was up early for the dawn shots (dawn was 7:30 am!) then we took the 17 mile drive around the monuments. In the afternoon we went for a drive, and ended up going through Valley of the Gods, a 19 mile drive on rough dirt roads. Quite spectacular, though. I drive a mid size SUV 4x4 with good ground clearance, I'm not sure I would have driven a sedan down that road! Tuesday we drove the 130 miles up in to Utah to Arches National Park, which was interesting, but maybe not as spectacular as I as expecting. The National Weather Service promised us a winter storm and 10-20 inches of snow on Wednesday and Thursday, so I cancelled the hotel in Canyon de Chelle and extended our stay in Monument Valley. We didn't get that much, but the local roads were closed, as were interstate highway's 40 and 17 around Flagstaff, so we really couldn't have either gone to Canyon de Chelle, or home. Anyway, it was a good week, I shot 605 photo's, quite a lot of video and read 4 books, and I didn't go into my office!!
The view from our room. Nice hotel, Navajo Nation owned, highly recommended.
