Today was another day of mostly driving. That’s the problem with an American road trip, the US is generally frickin’ huge and some days have to be sacrificed to eating miles. We left our ghost town and headed into Moab for brunch and a few last minute supplies for our camping trip. There had been some rumours of bears on the Colorado River but we tried not to think about that too much. James did read a news story entitled ‘Murders on The Colorado’ but it turned out to be referring to crows.
After feasting on Anasazi beans and cranberry smoothies (yes, Moab is one of those places) we headed south towards Monument Valley. We stopped at the town of Monticello and met a sweet lady in the visitor centre who was obsessed with Doctor Who. She gave us lots of great advice and was very excited when we said ‘brilliant’ – we sounded just like David Tenant, apparently.
We crossed into Navajo land where the rock formations have grand names like ‘Valley of the Gods’ and ‘El Capitan’. On a whim, we stopped at Goosenecks State Park to look at the incredible meanders on the Colorado River – we will be canoeing around a similar meander near Page in a few days. The river is mostly green/brown due to all the silt and wonderfully fertile, if less attractive.
We crossed into Navajo land where the rock formations have grand names like ‘Valley of the Gods’ and ‘El Capitan’. On a whim, we stopped at Goosenecks State Park to look at the incredible meanders on the Colorado River – we will be canoeing around a similar meander near Page in a few days. The river is mostly green/brown due to all the silt and wonderfully fertile, if less attractive.
On our last trip, we skipped Monument Valley in favour of another day at Canyonlands but we thought we should at least drive through it on this visit. The ‘monuments’ are towering monoliths of red rock that paint a perfect Wild West picture in the desert (most Westerns were filmed using this backdrop and John Wayne had a cabin around here). Some have funny names like ‘Mexican Hat’ and ‘Bear and Rabbit’ but if I’m honest, they all just look like rocks. There is a charge to do the full drive of the scenic tour but we were cheeky and just looked at them from the road.
The Navajo reservation is a weird combination of stunning scenery and sad little towns. On our way out of Tuba City (no tubas, not much of a city), we turned onto a dirt road at a random sign for ‘dinosaur tracks’. A Navajo man called Mike flagged down our car and offered us a tour. There were thousands of tracks all over the sandstone. He pointed out Dilophosaurus and Velociraptor tracks, a huge T-Rex footprint and fossilised claws, bones, eggs and 65 million year old poo. His patter was a little exaggerated – he suggested that two pairs of static prints were evidence of raptors watching in awe as a meteorite hit the earth and wiped them out – but entertaining. He insisted we take a raptor tooth and some petrified wood as a gift. It was interesting to see ancient relics preserved differently to a museum or national park, where the Navajo can gather the many teeth or bones and take tourists out to the trails without restriction.
Finally we made it to Lees Ferry Lodge, one of few outposts in a picturesque middle of nowhere known as Vermillion Cliffs. We had an awesome dinner of smoked trout and sweet potato fries before packing up for our camping night on the Colorado River. There must be something about us that is attracted to abandoned things - at time of writing, it appears that we are the only people at the lodge, and the restaurant just closed and the chef and server went home. It’s just us and the moon.
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