Navajos

As we drove along in Monument valley, we passed a lot of trading posts. These are actually placed exactly like the original trading posts between settlers and Indians. We stopped at one of these and hurried into the shade. This post was a jewelery booth run by a Navajo lady called Shine (in fact it was a lot longer and unpronounceable, but Shine for short). Her son Joe, who was 10 years old and will, I am convinced, be a very hansom young Navajo one day, was stringing necklaces together in the back of their van. They normally lived in Seattle were Shine works as a nurse. The land around us was ... tied ... to her clan, which means the female line for Navajos. The Navajo, like the Sioux think of the whole concept of owning a portion of land as completely absurd, but different areas are tied to different mother-clans, and if someone from another clan tried to settle down, there would be very serious trouble. "It would be war" Shine said, "but it never happens, people know better".

The jewelery was made by Shines mother who lived nearby and Shine was helping her out by watching the booth. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live in a landscape as surreal as monument valley, but it was just too weird.

Monument Valley

We left Bluff behind and headed for a drive through Monument Valley on our way to Kanab. Kanab is a small town placed conveniently between Zion and Bryce, our next to grand destinations. So we drove back to the crossroad and this time we turned in the direction of Mexican Hat, which is apparently a funny looking rock in Monument valley.

As we drove into the valley and the landscape just turned downright bizarre we tuned the ipod to Ennio Morricone done by Metallica... being a sensitive person, driving through that western-like scenery and listening to morricone almost made me cry.

After a while we pulled over to take a walk by a river cutting through the rocks by Mexican hat. We forced our poor Mustang as long into the rocky, gravelly place as we dared and then left it behind.

It was such a beautiful place, and after 3 days of just driving and sleeping, we really enjoyed clambering about. I even started running along the river, very unbecoming of a lady, just to enjoy the feeling of moving my body a little. Ivan must have felt the same, for he ran up a steep hillside most impressively. We were both punished with complete exhaustion though, since we are not in shape and it was very very hot.

We went down to the river to look around. After finding a path through the bushes, we noticed other tracks mingling with Ivans on the ground.

Mountain Lion. After finding several large animal bones scattered around as well, it became clear we had walked into someones Den!

But Mountain Lions dislike people and usually stay away, so we weren't that nervous, and the riverside was lovely and had a bit of precious shade.

...weird places

We left that big red rock and continued on our way, hoping to find a good place to overnight, before venturing into Monument Valley the next day. The landscape just got weirder and more spectacular by the minute.

We started to feel like we had landed ourselves in some old sci-fi version of Mars or something similar. It was just so different from anywhere I've ever been.



After a good while we came to a crossroad.

As you can see, we had the choice of going to Mexican Hat, Bluff or Blanding. It all sounds weird. But, in his wisdom Ivan chose to take us to Bluff, which turned out to be an excellent place to stay. This is a picture from across the street from our hotel. Again, its just so alien! The range of colors is just amazing.