A Monumental Day!


After a few amazing days at Lake Powell, we once again loaded up the car and headed over to Monument Valley within the Navajo Reservation area. The majority of our next two days would be spent driving, but with some cool stops along the way. If pictures of Monument Valley reminds you of the "West", it is for good reason - a ton of western movies were filmed in this area! Think: John Wayne.

There is only one self-guided hike at the valley, all the others require a Navajo guide. We were pretty exhausted from hiking at this point, ha, but Joe in particular is a huge Western movie fan so we did a bit of the self-guided hike. The hike definitely makes you feel like you are in the middle of the desert - it is HOT (no shade) and the ground is all sand. Walking uphill in sand is much more difficult than you think :)



 


 

Navajo taco!

In addition to western films, Monument Valley is also famous for FORREST GUMP! I first watched Forrest Gump at my aunt's house when I was a pre-teen and I have always remembered this part in the movie where Forrest is running across the country. Well, where he decided to finally stop running was RIGHT HERE! 






After  Monument Valley, the rest of our day was more driving through completely flat lands on our way to the next stop: Mesa Verde National Park!



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