Valley of the Gods - October 2013

Having enjoyed Monument Valley so much (getting there and rock formations), we decided to try for more views of unusual rock formations in Valley of the Gods. Even the drive to the place  in southeastern Utah was scenic - the highway winding through road cuts as it meandered southward.

Valley of the Gods is a seen from a loop drive (gravel road) through a BLM area. The road was in better shape than the one in Monument Valley! Some of the rock formations are named. Do you see the ‘Seven Sailors’ above? There are certainly seven of them - but I’m not sure about the sailor part. They look too chubby. Maybe 7 toddlers dressed up as sailors?

Some parts of the drive are very sandy rather than rocky. It is quite powdery and throws up plums behind vehicles; our black SUV is dusted with it almost immediately just as it was in Monument Valley.

Sometimes plants manage to hold on long enough to stabilize the sand. The floor of the valley is tenuously covered with vegetation.

There are some rock formations that take on the look of ruins - rocks with layers that take on the appearance of mortar. But these ruins have lasted much long than anything humans have made.

Even the debris from the erosion around the base of a ‘mitten-like’ rock formation has been their long enough to develop its own erosion pattern.

One formation was labeled with two names. We found out it all depends on your perspective. We saw the ‘Lady in a tub’ first (above) and then drove on a little further to see the ‘Balanced Rock’ (below).

Monument Valley - Part II

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park includes a visitor center and then a bumpy loop road that is best down with a higher clearance vehicle. The road meanders through rock formations that have been named: Western Mitten Butte, Eastern Mitten Butte, Elephant Butte, Camel Butte, Three Sisters, Totem Pole. The mind tends to leap to familiar forms when looking at the rocks against the sky….and we want to name what we are seeing. I always wonder if naming a rock formation after a familiar form reduces our perception of the details of the formation just as a stereotype about a group of people reduces our perception of the specifics about an individual. So - I decided to just include an unlabeled slideshow from Monument Valley in this post.

Monument Valley - Part I

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is barely on the Arizona side of the Arizona-Utah boarder and the day trip from Monticello UT to Monument Valley was so eventful that I am doing two posts about it. Today the focus is on the road trip down and back; it took just under 2 hours each way. Blanding is the only town of any size along the way; the visitor center there has a Navajo loom set up in the museum area. Mexican Hat is at the place where the road crosses the San Juan River. There are two distinctive rock formations along with way: Mexican Hat just north of Mexican Hat and Navajo Twins near Bluff. I’ve included the images I’ve captured of them in the slide show below.