Monument Valley & Election Day

We drove from Canyon de Chelly to Monument Valley. We decided to stay at the developed RV park in Goulding's Trading Post. Goulding and his wife started the trading post in 1924. Now it includes a hotel, restaurant, museum, grocery store, fast food and gas station, extra houses and an RV park, all to the west of Monument Valley. We arrived about 3:30 p.m., just enough time to do a laundry and take a shower before the place closed up at 5:00. It was Bob's birthday and I went to the grocery store to see if there was anything for desert. The baked goods all looked terrible, so we had chocolate Dove bars. Every evening Gouldings shows John Wayne films that were filmed in Monument Valley. We went over to see "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," one of John Ford's cavalry films. John Wayne played an older Captain in the cavalry and many of the scenes were filmed in Monument Valley, many times over. The film won an Oscar for cinematography.

The next morning we got up early to take the self-guided 17 mile tour of Monument Valley. There is a rough dirt road with 11 stops along the way. Monument Valley is a Navajo National Park, not part of the NPS. They have built a new hotel overlooking Monument Valley. The museum was closed (that's the problem with coming during the shoulder season). The morning started cloudy, but it got bluer and windier as the day wore on. This is one of the famous "Mittens," which the website assured us is was not falling down.

We were followed by this female dog for several miles. You can only drive about 10 mph, so every time we stopped she was there. I finally fed her some dog biscuits and the next time we stopped we decided to give her some of Darwin's dog food. Here are the two dogs enjoying breakfast. She scarfed the bowl of food, but stopped following us.

This is the three sisters. At each viewpoint there were Navajo jewelry vendors.

By the time we were coming back, the sky was clearer and the wind was really blowing. We saw lots of open pickup trucks with people bundled up and facing the blowing dust. We were glad we had gone earlier and had taken Snoopy down before the wind really got going.

We headed off south on US 163 towards Kayenta and decided to eat lunch in a restaurant instead of opening Snoopy because it was really blowing. We stopped at the Sand's Diner for traditional Navajo food. Bob had mutton stew with fry bread and I had a Navajo taco (fry bread covered with chili beans, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese). Real filling food.

As we continued south towards Flagstaff we passed Black Mesa (on the Hopi reservation) which is being mined for coal. The mining is destroying various sacred sites and is using up the water at a vast rate since the coal is carried as a slurry to the electric generating station. In addition it really began to blow. The views were obscured by the blowing dust and there were numerous large RVs pulled off by the side of the road to wait it out. Since we have a lower profile, we continued slowly on, though it was white-knuckle driving.

When we got to Flagstaff (2,000 feet higher than Monument Valley) we stopped at an RV Park and went in search of the Democratic Party headquarters. We really wanted to watch the election returns with similarly-minded people. We both ended up spending about 2 hours calling registered Democrats to make sure they had voted. By the time we quit, 6:50 p.m. Mountain Time, the returns were coming in and Pennsylvania had already been announced for Obama. The Obama supporters were meeting in the Orpheum theater, an old vaudeville house with various bars. We walked down and joined the mob scene watching CNN on a large screen. Most of the time we couldn't hear what was being said, but every time a state was announced for Obama, particularly Ohio, there were cheers. At 10 p.m., when Obama was announced as President elect, the place erupted. We hung around to hear his acceptance speech and McCain's concession speech. The difference in the crowds at the two events (the Biltmore with its invitation only white, older, clearly wealthy crowd vs. Grant Park with a multi-colored, multi-aged crowd) and the way the candidates kissed their spouses and acknowledged their running mates was stunning. Like so many, we could hardly believe that this day had come.

The next morning we headed off to let Bob play the disc golf courses of Flagstaff, which had hosted the World disc golf contest. The first course, on the Northern Arizona University campus was closed due to construction. The second course was at 9,500' and it was cool (46 degrees in Flagstaff). The third course, in Thorpe park, was perfect. We were also in search of a NY Times (unavailable by 9:30). I let him off and headed for the fabulous Northern Arizona Museum. It had a great exhibit on the geology and dinosaurs (filled with school children) and other exhibits on the tribes, pottery, basket weaving, jewelry and katsinas. An archaeologist from the museum had also unearthed a new form of dinosaur and there was a great exhibit on that. Bob played disc golf all day.

The second night in Flagstaff went down to 14 degrees and we got worried that our pipes would freeze. With our furnace running most of the night and sleeping bags on top of our blankets we survived just fine. Darwin had been sleeping under the table where the furnace vents, but that resulted in him being alternately hot and cold and moving around and flopping down, shaking the whole trailer. We have now made his bed on one of the benches so he stays warm, but not too warm.