Dave & Meredith's Travel Blog

Dave’s on a mule ride in the Grand Canyon today.  I was supposed to be with him, but I had a nasty reaction to all the dust over the last couple days, and now I am pretty sick.

Turns out we’ll be staying at the Best Western for our whole stay in the Grand Canyon instead of camping for the next two nights.  It’s about 20 degrees at night, and I just want to stay in bed.

Bummer.

– Meredith

We decided to stay in a hotel for 1 night so we can take monster-long showers.

Ahhh!

Here is the view from the window at the Best Western near the Grand Canyon’s South Rim:

What is that thing in the distance?  It’s a giant chicken standing in front of an American flag:

Don’t ask me, I’m just showing you pictures of what we see out our window.

– Meredith

Here is the view from our tent at the campground in Monument Valley, UT:

Of course, if you read the last post, you’ll know that we didn’t actually sleep in the tent that night, so the view would have been the same background with a tent that looked as if it would blow away any minute.  We took this picture before the wind really kicked up.

– Meredith

We stayed overnight at Monument Valley.  There’s only one place to stay right now – it’s like a small town, with a lodge, a restaurant, a gas station, a grocery and general store, and a campground.

It was quite breezy and dusty while we were touring Monument Valley, and we got to our camp site before sunset in order to set up our tent while it was still light out.  The wind made it difficult to set our tent up, but we managed it with the help of a nice man staying in an RV in a site nearby (thanks Irv from Salt Lake City!).

We went to dinner at the restaurant, and when we left, the wind had become even more intense.  We were worried about whether we would still have a tent upon returning to our camp site.  Fortunately, our tent was still there.  The wind was pounding on it, but it was holding relatively steady.  However, when I unzipped the tent fly and looked into the tent, I found it filled with sand.

I should probably tell you that we have a three-season tent.  That means the tent itself has open mesh windows, and you keep the elements out with the fly that goes over the tent.  This system works just fine when the elements are coming at the tent from above.  But we learned that when the elements are coming from the side, our tent can’t handle it.  Stupid tent.

We made the decision after looking at the tent that we would sleep in the car.  While we wouldn’t get a comfortable night’s sleep, at least we wouldn’t have sand swirling all around us (at least not as much as in the tent.  The inside of our car was covered in dust by the next morning!).  The wind was howling all night, shaking the car, and we could hear sand and little stones hitting the car with each big gust.  I woke up each time, expecting to see that our tent had blown away.  Actually, I was kind of *hoping* it had blown away.  You have to understand, I was really upset at the tent for not being able to shelter us that night.  Sleeping in the car was really uncomfortable!

At some point in the night, the people who were staying in a tent near us just packed up and left.  And the other tent people near us left before sunrise.  The wind was still gusting when we packed up to leave at about 8:00 am.  We couldn’t even see the monuments in the valley when the sun came up because the dust storm was clouding the view.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  We couldn’t wait to get out of that hellhole.

Here is a picture of the dust cloud surrounding Monument Valley as we were driving away:

Now we need to find a new tent with sealed windows.

– Meredith

After leaving Moab, we spent the day driving through beautiful scenery to Monument Valley. Monument Valley is one of those places that everyone has seen pictures of even if they didn’t know what it was called. The scenery is iconic Southwest America with vast plains dotted with lone rock buttes and mesas. Many commercials, TV shows and movies have been filmed here. The first films to make it famous were John Ford westerns starring John Wayne. A guy named Goulding owned a ranch in the Valley and wanted a way to provide jobs to local Navajo who were underemployed. He went to Hollywood and showed John Ford pictures of Monument Valley. John Ford was looking for a location for his next movie and the rest is history. Goulding is long gone but there is a resort, campground (where we stayed), and restaurant that still bear his name.

Now though, all of that is owned by the Navajo Nation. The entire Valley is part of the Navajo Tribal Park which is entirely owned and controlled by the Navajo. What this means is that visiting Monument Valley is a very different experience than visiting a US national park. For instance, we bought an annual pass to the US park system to save a lot of money but that didn’t apply here. Fair enough but we spent more fees to get in to the area for only a day than what you’d pay for a weekly pass to a US park. There’s more though. You can’t just go anywhere, even if there are roads that might take you where you want to go. You are only allowed on one 17-mile road which is unpaved and in poor condition. It also doesn’t necessarily show the best views of the Valley. You aren’t allowed in the park until after sunrise and you must leave before sunset. All of the above makes for pretty poor photography. On top of that, when we were there, the visitor center was closed for renovation.

All of that sounds pretty restrictive and it is. You can do more here but anything outside the above requires that you hire a Navajo guide and they must accompany you wherever you go. This gets expensive quickly. For anyone into photography, my recommendation is that unless you can afford a guide and make prior arrangements, photography will be a bit of a bust because of the time and place limitations. Looking through photo guidebooks I have, there are great things to take pictures of here (for example, the view from Hunt’s Mesa at sunrise looks amazing) but if I were to come back to Monument Valley, I’d only do it with a group willing to pitch in for a guide’s services.

We did the research on the above before we showed up so I can’t claim any of the above was a surprise but it’s hard to understand the meaning of the limitations without being here. It’s the difference between seeing it on paper and seeing it in action. In the end, we had planned to spend two nights here but we felt like we’d done all we could after staying only one so we left a day early for the Grand Canyon.

A few pictures below:

The tall column on the right is named the Totem Pole

A view over the Valley. The 17-mile road is visible in the foreground.

A view from the road.

This butte is part of a pair of buttes named The Mittens (hopefully for obvious reasons).

– Dave

This is the view from the window at the campground we stayed in near Moab, Utah for one night:

– Meredith

Our original plan when we left Boulder, CO was to make it to Monument Valley in one long day’s drive. We left a little late though and ran some errands along the way so, in the end, we decided to spend the night in Moab, UT. We set up camp in a nice spot, had dinner in town, and then crashed early. The next morning we had some time to visit Arches NP at sunrise since we now had some extra time to finish the trip to Monument Valley later that day. I had been to Arches and Canyonlands NPs 2 years ago on a workshop with Andy Biggs (a few of my photos from that are here) so I was able to give Meredith a pseudo-tour. By the time we got up and made it into the park, we only got about half-way in before the sun was about to rise so we stopped at a place called The Windows. These two arches (North Window and South Window) are holes in a sandstone wall. One can hike up and through the North Window and then look back to frame Turret Arch in the distance. Here’s a picture of the guy next to me doing that:

The sun rose behind some cloud cover so we didn’t get the brilliant splash of golden orange that is possible here but we had fun nonetheless. Here’s my shot:

We also took some time to wander around near Turret Arch. The sun peeked out for a bit:

It also rained a bit on us but not for too long and it made for interesting light:

Unfortunately, those were the last clouds we saw for over a week which makes for some pretty boring photography if you want a sky in the picture. More on the weather coming up.

– Dave

When we were in Boulder, our friend Paul told us about the mountain pine beetle that is destroying large lodgepole pine trees throughout Colorado.  The beetles have done most of their work on the west side of the continental divide, but recently, they have crossed over to the eastern side as well.  As we drove west from Boulder, it was shocking to see how many trees had been killed by this beetle.  There were some mountains covered in dead trees with reddish-brown needles, instead of healthy green ones.  The beetles have flourished due to a combination of milder weather (even in higher elevations) as well as a prior reluctance to manage the forests through controlled burning.

Experts estimate that within 5 years, all of the mature lodgepole pine forests in Colorado will be dead.  This is a very big issue for Colorado, with potential serious effects on the water supply, wildlife, carbon dioxide emissions, the lumber industry and tourism.

To learn more, here is a link to an article from the Rocky Mountain News on the issue (as you can see from the comments after the article, lots of people have opinions on who is to blame for the increased damage):

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/15/beetle-infestation-get-much-worse/

Here is a general Wikipedia article on the mountain pine beetle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_beetle

– Meredith

Here is the view from our window at Paul and Jenn’s place in Boulder where we stayed for 2 nights:

Our room faced the front of the house.  Behind the house, there’s a beautiful yard leading right out to a trail that goes up into the nearby foothills.  Paul didn’t care enough about us to put us in a room with that view, but he did want us to take a picture of his backyard and LIE to our readers by saying the nice view was the actual view from our window.  Nice try, Paul.  Liar.  😉

– Meredith

PS – Jenn had nothing to do with the attempted lie.

We flew from Boston to Denver and stayed with our friends Paul and Jenn in Boulder for a couple days.  Our time with them went too quickly, but we’re glad we were able to see them on such short notice.

Jenn had to work during the day, but Paul took us around Boulder, up into Rocky Mountain National Park for a quick view of elks bugling (it’s a mating season thing – it’s hard to describe the sound – it’s kind of a cross between a bugle and a scream), and to the local REI for some last minute gear for the trip.

Here is a picture of Paul and Jenn (they’re expecting a baby in December!):

– Meredith