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| Hiking | 0.50 Miles |
30 AEG |
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| no partners | | What a windy crazy day. Had a friend visiting from St. George who is moving back to the Midwest in a week, so we decided to have a farewell bash. Unfortunately the wind put the kibosh on most of our plans. Horseshoe Bend? Nope. Spencer Trail? Nope. Hackberry? Nope. Paria? Nope. So we decided to take a drive where we wouldn't be inhaling dust and treading through sand. Where to? Which direction? Should we head to Cameron and Tuba City? Always windy and dusty and sandy. I want to do some hiking, but I don't want to be coughing mud at the end of the trip. Our friend wanted Navajo Tacos and there's a possibility that Monument Valley would be less windy than Tuba, so off down 98 we went. Things were breezy but nothing atrocious as we crossed the Kaibeto and Rainbow plateaus. As we passed the Shonto turnoff, though, things became ominous. A brown haze covered the Klethla valley, and turning onto 163 did nothing to ease our fears. The dirt lowered as we approached Tsegi, and by the time we had emerged from Marsh Pass it was so windy and dusty that we couldn't see Kayenta until we reached the city limits.
Undeterred, we made a pit stop at McDonalds and Wells Fargo, and then hit the road again, thinking of Navajo Tacos at Gouldings. Passing Owl Rock the conditions got even worse. As we drove into Monument Valley, we could barely make out any of the fabled monuments - just dim shapes rising out of the murk. We stopped into Gouldings for our tacos and had a window seat - a view to brown nothingness. After our late lunch, we contemplated just heading home, but instead we were all intrigued by the Mars-esque appearance of the valley so we paid our $5/person and dropped down into the Monument Valley Dust Bowl.
It was spooky and eerie. Red stone rising from brown dust, winds blasting the truck, we peered through windows peppered with flying sand. We made occasional stops, and even ventured out of the truck a couple of times. We were rewarded with sand in the ears, pebbles to the calves, and nearly blew the door off the truck. We wanted to go see North Window, so along the viewpoint trail Sarah and I went. It was calm in the lee of the cliff. As we looked out into the haze, we heard a loud crack! "Oh poo mess" I said, as I turned to face the cliff to see a boulder the size of my torso plummet to the talus directly above us. Several shards of rock flew away from the impact zone, and one grazed my shoulder, but fortunately the main rock stayed put. We immediately determined that we were satisfied with our view and raced back to the truck.
We continued our tour and finally made our way back to the poorly-designed visitor center. After a restroom break, we were back on the road, winding our way through the dust back to Page. |
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Wildflowers Observation Substantial
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"The only thing we did was wrong was staying in the wilderness to long...the only thing we did was right was the day we started to fight..."
-Old Spiritual
My book, The Marauders on Lulu and Amazon |
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