We got a rainy day today, but that didn't stop us. After breakfast at a restaurant perched precariously between a cliff face and the San Juan River, we set out to explore the Valley of the Gods, which thankfully is very close to Mexican Hat. Gardens, valleys -- these gods have it all, right?
Of course, what we didn't take into account is that exploring the Valley of the Gods meant driving 17 miles along a dirt road that wound through the huge rock formations. Seriously, the people mover has been a real champ on this trip!
We really liked this area. Everywhere we looked there was some new and beautiful rock to gaze upon, and the dreary weather kept most of the other people away. Luckily, it wasn't raining so hard that the road turned from dirt to mud, because then we really would have been in trouble.
After our tour of Valley of the Gods, we got back on the highway and headed north, but again we found a challenge: the Moki Dugway, 3.1 miles of dirt road switchbacks at a 10 percent grade basically just hanging on to the edge of the mountain. That was a very exciting 8 minutes, which I am sure you appreciate that I captured on video for you.
Our next stop was Natural Bridges National Monument, where we got to see ... you guessed it ... cool rock formations. The first two, we just viewed from the platforms, but the third one, we hiked down to the underside to do a little exploring.
I should mention that all of the areas that we visited today are part of the recently created Bears Ears National Monument, the newest of our national monuments. President Obama named Bears Ears a national monument last year, a decision that was not without controversy, and there have been rumblings from the current administration about undoing that action, so we wanted to visit it before that happened. I don't pretend to fully understand the politics of land management in the West; I just know that we wanted to see this really fascinating place while we could.
Bears Ears in the clouds
No comments:
Post a Comment