Monument Valley

From the first day we started planning this trip there were two places I really wanted to see. Monument Valley in Utah/Arizona and the Rockies in Colorado. On Sunday we finally made the trip down to Monument Valley, on Mothers Day of all days. The kids woke me up with home made mothers day cards, and a DVD about the art of tattooing. That was cool. One kid (who shall remain nameless) woke me up with a moonie of the face drawn on their bottom!!

We only had an hours drive to get to Monument Valley. When I saw the monuments in the distance I got very excited. We stopped at a Navajo Indian stall on the way in, to take some photos of the valley in the distance and to look at the Indian jewelry. Both Jimmie and Annabelle saw something they wanted to buy from the stall. The necklaces were $12 each, but when the owner of the stall heard me tell them they'd have to use their own money he told them they could have them for $10 each. Little Barney was begging to buy something but I kept telling him he'd be better saving his money for a toy in Walmart than an Indian necklace. The stall holder must have felt sorry for him, as he picked him out a blue necklace made with juniper berries and gave it to him for free. He showed him the Juniper Tree and told him about how he made it. Barney was way more impressed with his gift necklace than he would have been if I'd bought it for him.

A few days before Barney had asked me if Indians were bad people. When I explained that they were nice people, he said he thought they were bad because they fought the cow boys. After the Indian man gave him the necklace he said to me "you're right Mummy, Indian people really are nice".

The drive into Monument Valley was as beautiful as I'd expected, although it was quite an overcast (yet hot) day. We stopped countless times to take photos. We saw wild horses wandering around the roads and Dan got a photo of two of them in front of the monuments. We paid $20 to get into the Indian run tourist part of the monument. This was really wasted money as we could see as well from the roads anyway. The visitor centre there was closed, and we couldn't take the RV on the scenic drive as the roads were unpaved. So we basically paid $20 to sit in a car park and eat lunch. We did take a walk down to the little Indian village and have a look in homes there.

It turns out that there isn't an RV park for about 150 miles either side of Monument Valley, which we didn't realise. So we ended up driving till late in the evening to a town in Colorado, just to find somewhere to sleep. The kids though we excellent the whole time. They are really getting used to traveling so much and entertain themselves every time.