John Ford Country

We left Bryce Canyon early on a morning with low clouds scudding the 9,000 foot elevation. Our route to Monument Valley, another bucket list item, took us through the New Mexico and Arizona desert country.

Fittingly, we stopped for breakfast at the Thunderbird Restaurant in Mt. Carmel, UT. Maybe I was intrigued by the "Ho Made Pie's". Really?

From there our route took us through the Grande Staircase - Escalante National Park. Yet another geologic wonderland featuring multi-hued cliffs, serpentine stone canyons and vast lonely plateau's. The Grand Staircase is composed of a series of cliffs (Vermillion, White and Pink) that from certain viewpoints strongly resemble a staircase. Major dinosaur fossils abound.

Then over the Glen Canyon Dam on Lake Powell just over the New Mexico border where we made a mundane but necessary provisioning stop at a Wal-Mart for water and other minor purchases (Yes, a Wal-Mart in the middle of the Navajo Nation!). From Lake Powell to Kayenta, New Mexico, our base for the Monument Valley, we were in the Navajo Nation. The mesas gave way to desert intersperced with buttes.

The Navajo Nation is largely a vast, undeveloped desert landscape without a single dwelling from horizon to horizon. Sarah had the AAA Indian Country map and she was an able navigator pointing out various buttes and rock formations that made this a scenic trip.

Kayenta turned out to be a dusty, poor looking community of single and double-wide trailers with three motels catering to the Monument Valley tourist crowd. After checking in our motel we made a bee-line for the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park with it's picturesque sandstone buttes and mesas that tower over the desert floor. A classic Indian County landscape, made famous by Hollywood filmmakers since the 1920's. Of course, some of my favorite films were shot on location here. John Ford was contacted by Harry Goulding and his wife "Mike" who had settled in the area in 1923 to set up a trading post to trade with the local Indians. The Gouldings suggested that Ford check out the landscape for western films and Ford fell in love with the scenery. He shot Stagecoach in the Valley in 1939 and over the years followed with several classics such as Fort Apache, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, My Darlin' Clementine and the The Searcher's. More recent films include Forrest Gump and Windtalkers. I've always loved these western films and the landscape provided instant recognition. Sarah too as she grew up with brothers who watched Million Dollar Movie on TV in which all of Ford's films were featured.

After touring the Goulding's original trading post and the Navajo exhibits we returned to our motel. As I was looking at the map I realized that we were within striking distance of another bucket list trip, a ride on the Durango & Silverton narrow gauge railroad in Durango, CO. Woo Hoo! We could get there via Four Corners (the only place in the U.S. where the boundries of four states intersect) and Shiprock, the butte in the middle of the desert that wagon train pioneers could see for several day's before they actually got there. Nothing like a quick course correction to keep us on our toes! That's the beauty of having your own transportation and control of your time.

Four Corners turned out to be another opportunity for the Navajo's to charge an entrance fee (they wouldn't accept our National Parks pass) and set up booths selling native made items. After the obligatory shot of me standing with my feet in four states we made a few purchases to help the local economy.

Like the pioneers, we could see Shiprock from a long ways away. Unlike them, we couldn't find a way to actually get to it. We found out later that Shiprock is culturally significant to the Navajo people so they haven't let it be developed as a tourist site.

By this time I had a full head of steam in my boiler and we turned the Edge towards Colorado and the Durango & Silverton. We arrived as the early train was returning from Silverton and I giddily shot photos of the roundhouse and engines in the yard. Suddenly I was our grandsons age as the sound of the steam engine whistle echoed over Durango!