| Submitted by: Evelyn C. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
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We returned to US 160 for another 19 miles east, then went north on US 163 for 24 miles to Monument Valley Tribal Park. This involved driving in Utah, but only for about a hundred yards, as the entrance is right over the state line, but the park is almost entirely in Arizona.
I would like to point out here that Monument Valley is a Tribal Park, not a National Park or a National Monument. Golden Eagle Passports are not accepted. I say all this because they say all this--on their entrance signs, on their brochures, etc. I suspect this is a source of much confusion.
Even before entering Monument Valley, we could see magnificent rock formations with such names as El Capitan and Owl Rock. But once inside you can see that the $2.50 admission fee is worth it. Of course, you still have two choices. You can drive your own car over the 17.5-mile dirt road through the park or you can take a guided tour that covers it. (Actually, the latter is still two choices: the 17.5-mile route for an hour and a half at $12.50, or an extended tour lasting two and a half hours and going to some additional sites for $15.) Since they said the road was passable for ordinary cars, we decided to drive ourselves.
The first part of the road was the worst par: fine loose sand with a lot of holes and ruts. (Coming back up was even worse, as it was hard to get traction if you slowed down, which I had to do when the car in front of me decided to stop briefly. But we did make it without mishap.) The only other really bad part was a fairly steep slope down a hill and across a stream, luckily fairly shallow. There was also a spring there, with the water being fed into something like a shower so that it came out of a faucet ten feet above the ground. Because this created a pool under it, the only way to fill a water bottle from it was by driving up to it and sticking the bottle out the window and under it. We watched one of the tour guides do this from his van, and he called out that we should do it too, that it was 'Navajo beer.' (On of the other differences between the Navajo Reservation and the rest of Arizona is that Prohibition is still in effect on the Reservation and alcohol is illegal.) Everyone on the Reservation seems very friendly (Mark compared them to the Dutch in this regard). I mean, here we were, driving ourselves around, not taking a tour, and yet the guide is as friendly to us as if we were. There was one spot where there were two Navajo girls about five years old and a sign saying you could take their picture for $2 each, which reminded us of the Masai girls in Kenya and Tanzania. But other than that, the merchants and vendors were much more dignified than in many places we've been. I know 'dignified' sounds a bit patronizing, but when comparing them to (say) an Egyptian vendor who jumps out from behind a bush trying to sell you a necklace, or even a New York street vendor with his fake Rolexes, it seems the right word.
Monument Valley is where John Ford filmed a lot of his Westerns (there's even a John Ford's Point named after him) and so would probably look familiar if you've seen such films as SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON or FORT APACHE. I'm not sure who named the formations; Elephant Butte doesn't sound like a traditional Navajo name. There's Left Mitten Butte and Right Mitten Butte, the Totem Pole (another mixed metaphor--totem poles are used by the Northwest Indians, not the Southwest), Thunderbirds Mesa, and so on. And these forms are scattered over a wide landscape (which I guess is partly why wind erosion could work on them to achieve these results). It's like a giant sculpture garden.
We had arrived at Monument Valley at 2:45 MDT. We finished the drive about 5 PM MDT (this also included a stop at the Visitors Center before the drive).
I must admit to being surprised when I see a satellite dish next to a house on the Reservation, or that vendors take credit cards. It's a lifetime of seeing either movies about the Indians of a hundred years ago or unfavorable modern images emphasizing poverty for charity appeals. To take a more extreme example, if everything you knew about California came from movies set in the 1800s and pictures of South Central Los Angeles, you'd be surprised at the real thing too. While the difference isn't that dramatic, life on the Reservation appears to be not all that different from life off it. The houses and cars are not noticeably different and, while there is slightly more herding and farming on the Reservation, people there have pretty much the same jobs as off. The ranger at Monument Valley does construction work in Phoenix during the winter, for example.
In many ways, the Navajo Reservation is like Puerto Rico--part of the United States, but with a different culture than the rest of the United States and with a certain degree of autonomy. It's like a spectrum--Puerto Rico is more separate than the Navajo Reservation, and on the other side you have the New Orleans area of Louisiana, not officially separate in any sense, but supporting a distinct culture (Cajun) none the less, and having a somewhat different political structure (parishes instead of counties, and more laws based on the Napoleonic Code rather than on English common law).
When we left Monument Valley, we had dinner at El Capitan Cafe at the intersection of US 160 and US 163. Mark had a Navajo taco: beans, meat, lettuce, and tomato salsa on a large piece of 'fry bread,' which is like (Asian) Indian puri. (It is very confusing to refer to Asian Indians in this log. It's interesting that I find it necessary so often.) I had chile beans with fry bread. Good stuff, and clearly authentic--all the other customers were Navajo.
We returned to Flagstaff over the same route after dark. The sky was full of stars, more than we ever see at home. We even stopped on the way to look at the sky away from any light. (There wasn't even very much traffic, so it was really dark.) We could see the Milky Way clearly (not possible in New Jersey, at least with all the lights where we are) and there were so many stars we couldn't manage to pick out the Big Dipper among them, which is easy in the somewhat less populated skies back home.
We got back about 8:30 PM, ran a wash through the laudromat near us (one thing university towns have is laundromats), and went to sleep.
Mileage today: 400 miles.
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Today we 'finish' Flagstaff, or at any rate see what we can before heading for Winslow. Most of the motels still have 'Vacancy' signs out so we might have been able to stay another night. Then again, they might have only singles left.
After breakfast and a quick stop at an ATM (isn't technology wonderful?), we drove up West Mars Hill Road to the Lowell Observatory. It is called Mars Hill Road because Percival Lowell did all his studies of Mars at the observatory he built here. (Most of them were about his canals, which turned out to be optical illusions, but he also did a lot of work whose accuracy and value remains.) It was also here that Slipher first found the evidence for an expanding universe and Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto (whose existence Lowell had predicted--alas, Lowell died before the discovery was made in 1932). Tombaugh used a 'blink comparator' to flip back and forth between two photographs of the night sky taken six weeks apart, looking for the one 'star' that had moved (only planets would move against the background that fast). I tried it out; if it had been me looking for Pluto, we'd still be looking.
It was cold and windy at the top of the hill, but at 10 AM the Visitors Center opened and we went in. The chandelier in the center is Tiffany or Tiffany-style and shaped like Saturn with its rings, a motif also seen in the iron gate leading to the telescope dome. The tour was given by a student (of mathematics, not astronomy) who seemed to concentrate on making it folksy and accessible rather than highly technical. Some of the folksy stuff was interesting, though--did you know that Lowell used cooking pots and fry pans from his wife's kitchen as lens covers on the telescope?
They're building a new Visitors Center which will be open in two years, at which point it will probably be like every other science museum and lose the historic aspect it has now. Even now, the small gift shop has books of photographs from Mariner and Voyager, but none of Lowell's own books.
On this trip we're seeing a lot of natural wonders, and Lawrence WattEvans' s statement (see page 20) still applies, but I should note here that Mars has canyons that would swallow the Grand Canyon and mountains to dwarf Everest (Valles Marineris and the Tharsis volcanos, respectively). Just wanted to keep it all in perspective.
We left the observatory around 11 AM and drove north back to Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monument. We had driven through here in the dark two days before and so hadn't seen the giant cinder cone of Sunset Crater, the remains of a volcano that erupted in 1064, Arizona's last active volcano. Nor had we seen the other cinder hills or lava flows. And they were worth seeing, covering the entire area. Hiking is no longer permitted on the cinder cone itself, as the erosion caused by sliding cinders had killed all the plants on one side of the cone. (The trails were closed twenty years ago and filled in, yet you can still trace their path across the bare cone.) It all reminded me of Bartholome, the volcanic island we visited in the Galapagos, which they were also about to close for the same reason. In addition to cinders, there was aa lava and pahoehoe lava. The former is rough and jagged; the latter is smoother and in rope-like strands. The names are from Hawaiian, by the way.
We hiked the trail to the base of the cone and around the lava fields, trying desperately to avoid the large crowd of noisy children from an Episcopalian school. It was still quieter than the Visitors Center, where they were hammering away repairing the roof. Altogether we spent about an hour and a half at Sunset Crater, then continued down the loop road to the Wupatki ruins. In particular, we saw the Wupatki ruins and the Visitors Center, since we had seen the rest two days ago. This took about a half hour and then we backtracked past Sunset Crater and almost to Flagstaff, where we got onto I-40 east.
You may have noticed that while I mention breakfast and dinner, I never talk about lunch. That's because lunch is something like graham crackers and dried fruit, eaten while on the road. To do a trip like this you need four things, or rather you must lack four things: you must lack a mileage charge on your car, lunches, children, and brains. We're enjoying ourselves, but I can't actually recommend our schedule to anyone else.
As I said, we got onto I-40 east, but only for a few miles, to Walnut Canyon National Monument. At this point we hit the break-even point on our Golden Eagle Passports and we're only two-thirds of the way through the trip. This area of the country is heavily dotted with National Parks and National Monuments, and at a dollar here and two dollars there and ten for the Grand Canyon, it can add up fast.
Walnut Canyon National Monument is more cliff dwellings, these built in (surprise!) Walnut Canyon. This is much narrower than the other canyons, so the only way to see the dwellings very well is to climb down 240 steps. This doesn't sound bad, but then when you're done you have to climb back up, the equivalent of climbing a nineteen-story building, and at an altitude of 7000 feet. Still, we were feeling frisky, so we decided to try it instead of just peering at the ruins through binoculars. |
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