While staying in Monument Valley, we learned that there is a natural arch just a short hike from the RV park. It’s called Hidden Arch. We decided to go see it one day while here. It was a very short hike indeed and took us less than 15 minutes to get to the arch. It’s certainly hidden, and the rock markers weren’t very clear, so we hiked in one way that required clamboring over rocks that Laddy couldn’t manage, so Jeff went in and took pictures and noticed a different route. So, we backtracked a bit and found the other way in to take more pictures. It was a nice surprise to find an arch here.

Here are a few pictures:

Monument Valley is not as large as I thought it would be. From pictures I’ve seen of the rock formations I thought they were very spread out with lots of land between. This is not the case. There are maybe 18 named rock formations in Monument Valley and 8 are viewable from the state road coming into the Monument Valley town. More are viewable from a 17-mile dirt road going through a large part of the valley, and there are a few more that can only be seen if you take a tour with a Navajo guide that goes deeper into the valley.

We’re staying in an RV Park connected to a hotel, grocery store, theater and restaurant all owned originally by a couple named Goulding. They homesteaded in this area during the time when the Navajo were just coming back into the area after being forced to walk to a small reservation in N.M. When the U.S. gave them a reservation here in their ancestral homeland, the Gouldings were allowed to stay on and they did a lot of business with the local Navajo. During the depression the Navajo people suffered terribly and the Gouldings heard that a movie studio was scouting for a location to film a western. They went to Hollywood with photos of Monument Valley and the result is that “Stagecoach” starring John Wayne was filmed here and several more movies were made here in Monument Valley, making it a tourist destination.

We chose to drive the 17-mile dirt road. We saw that people still live in the valley, some still in the traditional hogans without running water or electricity. We got some great views of the rock formations in the valley, the most well-known is the Totem Pole, which is a very tall thin straight rock spire. It’s right next to three more spires.

We also drove a few miles from Monument Valley and took a dirt road through what is called Valley of the Gods. This area was so similar to Monument Valley that I am combining the pictures into this blog entry.

Here are pictures we took of the Monument Valley and Valley of the Gods:

While in the area we drove down to Canyon de Chelly, a large canyon with high sheer cliff walls that has been occupied by Navajo and Anasazi (Navajo for The Ancient Ones) for over 1,000 years. Vehicles can only enter the canyon on one end where the cliffs are low – at the other end of the canyons the cliff walls are hundreds of feet high. There are many trails in various parts of the canyon for hiking and horses and sheep though. The canyon is only accessible to tourists in 4-wheel drive vehicles with a Navajo guide. We took a tour of the canyon in an open Jeep with our guide named Bennie. Bennie has family that still lives in the canyon parts of the year. He told us many stories about living in the canyon and how his ancestors lived. There are people who live in the canyon either part of the year or year round.

The canyon floor is a riverbed and is very deep sand. In the spring the snow melt and rains make the river flow, but this time of year (October) the river is dry and the only water for the residents is either to truck it in or as Bennie told us, put pinholes in the side of a 50-gallon drum and bury it – water will seep in through the sand and it can then be pumped up through the barrel. It is naturally filtered.

The Anasazi built several cliff dwellings along the canyons and in more recent times they lived in traditional hogans, round buildings shaped by logs and covered in mud, with a door and a smokehole at the top. Now some residents live in campers and trailers.

There are a lot of horses that live in the canyon, and part of the year cattle and sheep live in the canyon as well.

It was a beautiful area with the high sheer cliffs, trees and grasses on the valley floor.

Here are pictures we took on our tour: