We woke up at our amazing campsite in Goblin Valley. Our plan was to get all the way down to Monument Valley by the Arizona line. If you didn’t read the last post, make sure to catch up here.
We packed up quickly and headed out with the early light.
As soon as we left the campsite, we were rewarded for getting up and out so early. We spotted a small group of pronghorns that were crossing the road and then were grazing right next to our car.
After a very exciting start, we got properly on our way.
We stopped for gas station coffee and jerky for breakfast, which was a staple on the trip. This gas station was actually in a cave, which was definitely a first for me.
We then headed down towards Glen Canyon.
We didn’t really know what to expect, but we were surprised when we saw this. We pulled over on the side of the road.
We got in the car, and then immediately pulled over again when we saw this.
Glen Canyon didn’t make it on our itinerary this time, but we’re going to try to get back and spend some time there in the future.
We then headed to Natural Bridges National Monument.
We hadn’t originally planned this stop, but we wanted to break up the drive and we had plenty of time to get to Monument Valley. We had the national parks pass, so it didn’t cost any extra money to stop at a national park or monument. We tried to take advantage of that whenever we could.
As we found out at the visitors center, Natural Bridges National Monument is not only famous for the natural arches, but also some ancient ruins of some people who lived there, who were related to the people who built what are now the ruins at Mesa Verde.
First we saw some of the bridges. It’s a shame we didn’t spend more time there, because walking down in the gorge would have been really cool.
Then we saw some of the ruins, but from very far away. The ruins are underneath that rock overhang.
I think this is one of the most famous arches in the park. It was very impressive, but looks like it could fall apart at any moment.
And then we were back on the road again. From the road we could see Bears Ears National Monument.
We kept driving and then we saw all these signs about construction and a 5mph speed limit. That’s when we realized we were on top of a mesa and we were about to drive down the edge of the cliff into the valley below.
This was definitely the scariest drive of the trip. It was a one-lane dirt road with lots of curves, barely anything after the edge of the road, and only the occasional place to pull over and let people pass. But these were some of the best views of our drive.
We had seen that the town near Monument Valley is called Mexican Hat. We actually passed the rock that gave this town its name. If you look closely, it sort of looks like an upside down sombrero. Well, I imagine it does if you have been walking around in the desert all day.
We stopped in the town and spontaneously decided to spend the night in one of the motels there so we could take a shower and sleep in the air conditioning. So we went and got a room. Then we saw that they had a restaurant in the same complex as the motel. We went in and had Navajo tacos, which are apparently one of the many Utahan delicacies that James decided we had to seek out and try on this trip. When they arrived, we were presented with Navajo fry bread, which is like a circular Chinese youtiao (also fried bread) with chilli, cheese, and other taco toppings on top. It looked more like a pizza, but it was just what we needed, since we had only had jerky and coffee so far that day. We also got to spend a while cooling down inside, drinking ice water, and using the wifi (which was atrocious).
We decided to put our stuff in the room and then go check out Monument Valley, now that it wasn’t the middle of the afternoon.
Then we finally got our first sight of Monument Valley.
I was disappointed by the number of cars that prevented us from running down this road so we could feel like Forrest Gump. It was still a pretty spectacular sight.
There’s not too much to do other than drive through. we drove past it over to the Arizona side and then turned around back towards Mexican Hat.
We got back to the hotel room and had a rest. The original plan had been to make some food in the room and then go out after dark and take some pictures of the stars with the cool silhouette of the rocks. We were so tired from the last few days and still full from the Navajo taco, so we just hung out in the room and went to bed early.
Looking back, some of the days on this trip were so full of things – I can’t believe that we were able to do so much in a single day. I guess that’s what happens when you wake up with the sun. It caught up with us a few times, and nights like this where we got a motel let us sleep a little easier and sleep past sunrise.
The next post in this series is about our drive back up north to Canyonlands National Park.
