The Valleys

Our drive northward from the Expo took us from the forested mountains of Flagstaff to the desert mesas, canyons and valleys of northern Arizona and Southern Utah.  Our first stop was Monument Valley.

When we saw Phil and Roberta in Portland this past spring, I asked them about Monument Valley because their home has a photograph of them on horseback in the valley.  Roberta made a comment how it had changed dramatically between the two times they had been there, and that friends had told her it’s changed even more.  So we weren’t expecting much.  Indeed it was pretty much what I expected.  It was somewhat, but not totally, commercialized with a hotel, restaurant and an “RV” park that simply consisted of a bunch of spaces that face the monument.  While it’s good to see Native Americans in control of their own land and (hopefully) benefitting from the beautiful location from a tourism perspective, there isn’t a lot of flexibility in terms of just driving around and exploring.  Exploring requires a guide, and the contact from a friend of ours didn’t call us back when we reached out to him, so we limited ourselves to the main viewpoint and the drive-around loop, ultimately deciding we’d only stay for the day.

After checking out the grand view from the main area, we headed down the loop road.  The road wasn’t very well maintained, especially the part from the mesa down to the valley floor, but of course Beast had no problems either going up or going down.  I can’t say as much for some of the rented cars though - that must have been a very rough ride!

The loop down on the valley floor isn’t all that bad, you do get to see a variety of formations, and that day the clouds made for some ok, although not great photography conditions. 

And there was certainly enough to make one wish for the flexibility to go wherever you wanted to and to have a real opportunity to explore the area. 

However, even the loop had plenty of traffic and there wasn’t really anywhere we found to photograph, so we soaked up the beauty and decided that we’d just move on.

After spending the night at a near-by RV park, and getting a nice shower and filling breakfast, we started the short journey to Valley of the Gods, where we knew we’d have a bit more flexibility in driving around and where we’d gotten a tip about a great campsite from Alan Feld, the owner of Sportsmobile.

As we crossed the Arizona-Utah border, we officially entered the Bears Ears National Monument, where we would stay for the next several nights.  After a short drive past Mexican Hat, we made the turnoff towards Valley of the Gods.  But before we entered Valley of the Gods, we made a quick detour to Goosenecks State Park. You can see why it got its name. 

I do have to hand it to Utah, they’ve done a great job of protecting many of their geologic wonders through state park designations.  

After a fairly short stop, we headed on to Valley of the Gods.  From the western entrance, it looks like a wide, open valley, though you can see some wonderful geologic features off in the distance.

As you drive eastward, you get closer and closer to what, for us at least, were the areas of most interest

The great thing is, the road runs into those areas, which gives you views all around once you’re in there.

Along the way we spotted a couple of Land Rover Defenders off in the distance.  For those who don’t know them by name, they’re the Land Rovers you see in photographs of safaris in Africa, and in shows like Wild Kingdom and Dakari (yes, I’m dating myself).  They are also vehicles of legend in the overlanding community.  In many ways, overlanding became overlanding because of the Land Rover Defender (which were sold here in the US for only a few years - one of unfortunately too many great overlanding vehicles to not be sold here! [Mercedes, we want the Gelandewagen Professional here!]).  

We played leap frog with the Defenders a couple of times - they’d stop, we’d pass them; we stopped, they’d pass us; they’d stop, we’d pass them, and so on.  At one point, we had stopped and I climbed on top of Beast to get a quick photo with my point-and-shoot, and heard the defenders coming from behind.

As the Defender drove by, he gave us a thumbs up!  Now that was impressive - a thumbs up from a Defender.  That definitely means Beast is cool!

I waited for the second Defender to pass and for them to drive down by the area I originally was photographing.

We passed them again later on, and eventually stopped at the location where we ultimately spent the night.  While we were up there, the Defenders turned off the road and drove up beside us.  We wound up having a great conversation.  They were two guys from Florida who had gone to the Overland Expo and were on their way back - the long way of course.  One guy had a British accent, the other obviously American, but both Defenders were right-hand-drive vehicles from the UK.  

As we were talking, the Brit mentioned that he was an air-force brat and that he was born in South Dakota.  Ann said, “Ellsworth Air Force Base?”  The guy’s jaw almost hit the ground.  He had never met anyone who had ever heard of the place - so they got into a long talk about South Dakota and growing up as military brats.  It really is a small world!

They eventually went on their way, and we decided to explore the side road that would take us into the center part of Valley of the Gods so we could check out the camp site that Alan had recommended.

The track varied from easy to drive, to patches of deep sand, to rocky.  Beast handled it all with aplomb

Alan was right - it was a lovely campsite with a great view.  It was located right by the major drop-off where the creek (when it runs) passes and was extremely isolated from anyone else.  It was a very large site, but had the distinct disadvantage of being quite a bit lower in elevation than the site we explored when the Defenders drove up.

As we were debating whether to stay there for the night or not, I noticed a convoy of 8 overlanding vehicles (obvious by their roof-top tents, big wheels and vehicle types - even from that distance) off in the distance driving in from the east entrance.  A little while later, we saw them turn onto the track that led to the site.  We figured they were coming to this camp site (we were right) and decided that we would be generous and let them have it.  That and the fact that the other site was better for photography in the morning.  I’ll let you decide what was the driving factor for us heading back and waving them onto the campsite.  

We checked out one other campsite (the site where the other Sportsmobile spent the night), and while it had a higher elevation than the one we just left, it was a bit further south and didn’t quite have the view of what became our choice site for the night.  Figuring that most folks wouldn’t want to drive up the rocky ledges to get to our ultimate destination for the evening, we drove around a bit more that afternoon.  The afternoon turned more into a scouting trip than a photography shoot, and eventually we headed back to our campsite for a very windy evening and night.

You couldn’t really have asked for a better location to be in the morning.  The wind had died down, so photography was definitely on the agenda.  No need to fully break down camp because we were already where we wanted to be.  All we had to do was change clothes, make a pot of coffee and pull out the camera gear.  Because it was still so early, we packed up anyway and waited.  Nothing like having your coffee cup with you while photographing, sipping away on a chilly morning until the sun gets just right.  Then start photographing in earnest. 

After a few photographs made just a bit too early for morning light, and a bit too late for night time light, things started getting very interesting.

And like it is on any morning where you get that incredible light, it doesn’t last long so you go from image to image to image as fast as you can see them because the light never lasts as long as you would like.

But then, as will sometimes happen, the sky starts to light up.

After making several images, I realized that I might have a better vantage point from Beast’s roof rack, so up I climbed.  I managed to make it up and make some shots before the sky color totally disappeared.

It might have lost that incredible flood of orange, but it still had a lovely pink cast.

The sun quickly rose over the horizon and everything was in a blaze of sunlight.  I took a few iPhone photographs waiting for the sun to rise a bit to hit the landscape, then started making more images.

It’s probably best to end this post with the panorama that I started this series of postings with:

What a way to start my Birthday!

If you look carefully, you’ll see Ann near the bottom of the frame making a photograph.  And if you look carefully in the images above, you can see our various “neighbors” that I mentioned in the previous post.  In general, we were pretty much out there all alone.  Just the way we like it.

As the sun rose further, the light became much more intense and it was time to call it a morning.  We made breakfast and then packed up, ready to continue our exploration of the Bears Ears National Monument.

The Valley of the Gods is on our “must return to” list.  And the next time, we’re going to stay for a few days.