SouthWestSlide: _{Spring 2004}

Phase Six_(a)
Across the Navaho Nation

This is all high country, mostly dry country too. The Navahos moved in just before the Spanish; the Mormons arrived somewhat later. This are is unlike the rest of America, only more so.

We love the greater Four Corners country except when it's too hot or too cold (which is most of the time) or when we're broke down (too often) or broke (not often). You wouldn't like it. Go somewhere else.

Day 63: Monument Valley Tribal Park
(Monday 31 May 2004)

Memorial Day Morning, Monument Valley Utah. Yesterday we brunched in Farmington, Brass Ashtray or Brass Ashram or whatever, a corporate eatery in a corporate town. The food was tasty enough (mumble); then a Safeway for shopping and a big sub sandwich to see us through the rest of the day, served for both teatime and dinner.

And we drove, as I mentioned, out the dull road towards Kayenta, gave up around Mexican Hat. Ah these wonderful landscape scenes but I was so tired, too tired even to photograph. We pulled down here into Monument Valley. We're staying at Goulding's Trading Post lodge / RV camp, enticed by the showers and pool.

Ah yes the showers, full of Japanese and French people, a Japanese guy washing his little daughter. The pool, full of nobody except us. Rather refreshing to rehydrate after so much dehydration. The RV park is stuck among rocks, we do have a little window of opportunity to view the spires of Monument Valley. I should jump up RIGHT NOW and take pictures. We are scheduled today for an ALL DAY open-vehicle tour of Monument Valley. We'll make the most of this.

Meanwhile, what can I say of the RV park? Other than the barking dogs, it's pretty nice.

Our road tour actually starts kinda late, 9:00 local time. 2 1/2 hours before then we heard the planes going overhead from the adjacent airstrip ferrying viewers in for the the early morning high-relief long-shadow images. Much of the merchandise around here is memorabilia for sale, not so much about Indians as about Monument Valley in the movies - John Wayne biographies, yada yada. Visit John Wayne's cabin! Get posters for all the movies shot here! Yeah sure, THOSE are valuable, eh?

TOURING: Departing on our Monument Valley tour, we start off rolling towards Mystery Valley; we'll see Monument Valley this afternoon. At the entrance to the tribal park is the Navaho Mall which is a couple rows of vendors' shacks somewhat reminiscent of Panajachel Guatemala, only drier.

Rolling down the road the driver points out farmsteads, the sheep and goat ranchers. We're driven past a number of colorful rocks and told to use our WILD IMAGINATIONS to see figures in them. Our guide describes many things, seriously or not, and giggles a lot.

(Driver singing a Navaho song - passengers applaud.) Our guide Irvin, a big tall fellow, singing. As we transition from Mystery Valley to Monument Valley he tells us about the uranium mines here, one on a mesa almost above the Mittens, and another up above our campground, Gouldings.

We've stopped at many rocks to climb under and over arches, walk and peer into cliff dwellings and markings, stroll through shelterd brush. We stop far in a deep shaded canyon for lunch. We don't have to hunt any rabbits, the guide is grilling hamburgers. Then we roll again.

We're surrounded by redrock, castles and carvings and monoliths. Hidden away in places are old Anasazi (er Hisat-Sinam) dwellings and petroglyphs. Down on the valley floor: farmers, hogans, houses, all the appurtances of ranch life. Kids on horseback herding cattle or sheep and goats. And everywhere here on the flats, this fine red powdery dusty sand.

Day 62: Between Tribal Parks
(Tuesday 1 June 2004)

CRUNCHY EYEBALLS. Yesterday, most of the tour was spend around Mystery Valley which was nice, solitude, just the tour group for the most part. No independent wandering allowed. Then we hit the Visitor Center and Monument Valley and it got very busy and the roads had seen way to much traffic and it was all dusty, and one of our party remarked that her eyeballs felt crunchy.

Then we saw all the canned-tour stuff, more rock formations with funny names. If you use your WILD IMAGINATION you can almost see the figures and faces. Then we went out by a dune area and a little soggy bottom where a small herd of mustangs were watering.

We stopped in the hogan of a famous weaver and she gave us a demo of working the yarn and dressing her great-granddaughter's hair. Left a small token for picture-taking.

But by midafternoon we were all tired. By late afternoon we were all tired and sandblown and sunburnt and dazed. Maureen and I staggered off the tour truck at Gouldings and staggered into the gift shop. were revived by cool air and water and goodies. Staggered up the hill to their eatery for a terribly carniverous dinner. Then staggered back to camp, well took the shuttle back to camp. Staggered into bed. And it was a full busy day.

NAVAHO MALL: This morning we got up early as usual, laundered and showered - same Japanese guy and his little daughter, but how she's alternately screaming and laughing - I try to sing soothingly. We rolled out of the RV park and hit the Navaho Mall, And it did remind us of some of the streets in Guatemala except it was much wider, but the shops were as impromptu. We'll have to call that main drag in Panajachal the Maya Mall.

At one shop I mentioned Area 51 and the fellow told us about seeing a flying saucer. "Well there's a couple women in the car up ahead of us and they didn't see the light in the sky, but we saw the light in the sky." And there was a kid playing guitar and we swapped a few guitar licks, I wrote down the chords for BEHIND BLUE EYES. And a quietly sullen kid, busy drawing cartoons, a comix layout, not minding the few customers.

Then there was the fellow who was proud his daughter had just graduated, she was going off to nursing school, he was making her a beaded stethoscope. Won't be any others like THAT at the hospital, no.

We met a wonderful young silversmith, Emmanuel Gray, who told us that he looked long and hard of a Folsom Man drawing, looked at it for a couple of weeks before he started working it in silver, from petroglyphs near his home just a couple miles away. And when he worked with stones he looked real hard and close at the texture of the stones before working settings on them.

EARLY AFTERNOON: And now it is hot and just past midday, what? 2:30 here local time. We're going past more huge red mesas, heading south towards Kayenta, then westward over to Navajo National Monument. The next nearest campground - yesterday was exhausting, so today will be a short drive.

All the vendors and artists back there at the Navaho Mall who talked with us, told us that they all lived nearby, "Oh on this mesa over here or that up that draw there. Oh ya look out the door, that's my house up on that mesa up there." All these guys have a real long commute, yah. Mostly nonmotorized. Many people live and ranch within the Tribal Park,

And we get into Kayenta - on the outskirts, a lot of old modulars, trailers; in closer, lots of new prefabs. And the newest with pretty multicolored steel roofs. Kinda looks like just another desert city, with trading posts, set on a wide dusty flatland.

In Kayenta the Navaho Code-Talker Display and the Navaho Cultural Center are at the Burger King. Next door is the older Arts and Crafts Center, an almost-deserted enclosed Stonehenge sheltering a few vendors in a shaded ring, decaying concrete and Navaho cowboy music.

Rolling west from Kayenta we have Black Mesa on the south and an unnamed mesa on the north. We're climbing into the mesa country, back into piñon-juniper country. Around Tsegi it's looking pretty spectacular, uh-huh. Going through the eroded redstone canyon, mesas around us, trees around us, lots of cars behind us who wanna go a lot faster than we do.

We're running beside Laguna Creek which actually has water in it. And looking off to the north up Tsegi Canyon we see all those vivid rocky formations up there containing Navajo National Monument and its huge cliff dwellings.

MONUMENT MEMORIES: Ah let's see, some memories or addenda for the Monument Valley experience. At the Navaho Mall, a cow walking down the main street there, bellowing, sounding like an elephant. And the fellow in one shop, joking, saying I look like Kenny Rogers and did I miss not singing with Dolly Parton? And our lunch of Navaho Tacos on fry-bread, meaty and veggie both delicious. And people saying that yesterday, Memorial Day, sure was busy but for the most part, summer is boring. That is, the YOUNG people say that summer is boring.

And on our tour, Irvin our guide, saying that he grew up going wild out there. And one of the jobs for the the kids is chasing sheep; they chase the sheep out in the morning and chase'em around all day and chase'em back in, in the afternoon; then next morning, chase'em back out again. Not herding'em, chasing'em. (Maureen laughs.)

LATE AFTERNOON: At the turnoff here to Navajo National Monument there's somebody chasing some sheep along. And right behind there is Peabody Coal Company's operation, and Irvin saying that in the fall, Peabody Coal opens the mines to the local people, they can come in and pick up free coal to keep warm over the winter. Which is pretty handy because Monument Valley is kinda short on trees.

No tree shortage up here though; we're ascending to 7000 feet and the pines and junipers are getting taller and thicker. We're coming into Navajo National Monument with ulterior motives. We're not going to take the strenuous ranger-led tours out to Betatakin and Keet Seel ruins, we're just gonna camp here, look at the Visitor Center, look at the fleets of puffy white clouds in the sea-blue sky. But climb up steep trails and narrow ravines to see great ruins? Uh no, we're a bit too worn-out for that - this time.

TUESDAY EVENING, we have a campsite in Canyon View Campground, Navajo National Monument, overlooking the canyon complex. Behond that, Black Mesa - after dark there's one light on its point like a lighthouse on a cliff above stormy waves, but these waves are frozen sandstone. Up here at the camp we look in the other direction, we're on a ridge, westward there's Navajo Mountain slumbering on the horizon, Lake Powell on the other side.

Up here we're surrounded by knotted twisty old junipers, the nearest one is quite alive although it's hollow straight down the middle. The temperature, the weather is delicious up here at 7200 feet. The air's clean, the soil's still that fine red powder that we saw down below. The moon is almost full, smirking down on we measly hu-mans.

Day 63: Navajo NatMon to Kanab Utah
(Wednesday 2 June 2004)

WEDNESDAY MORNING, Navajo National Monument, getting ready to roll out of this little campground, leaving behind the dust, dusty trees and shrubs and vistas, eight cents in the dirt, an early morning jogger - no bells, no horns, no explosions, no traffic, no pancakes.

Before we leave we traverse the Sandal Trail which leads down through the mesa-top pygmy forest out to a canyon clifftop overlooking the Betatakin ruins down below, and there they are! Inside a giant arch in the sandstone, in the shade so I can't get a good picture. Bummer.

All around us: the piñon-juniper-sage-ephedra community, buffaloberry, rockrose. Down below: a stand of aspens and firs, relics of a moister time, nestled in a sheltering north face. The Aspen Trail is 70 stories down and 70 stories up. The Betatakin Trail is five hours at least. Even at 9:00 in the morning local time, 7200 feet, it's pretty warm. So we'll do those in some other era. We'll pull fibres from the broadleaf and narrow-leaf yuccas, weave sandals for ourselves, and trudge down there in the traditional way, right.

In the Visitor Center, a silversmith making jewelry. He says they have a daily rotation of artisans and artists, basketmakers and rugweavers and potters and musicians, all sequentially sharing this pleasant indoor space to work and demonstrate and sell and talk,

ROLLING WEST: After Black Mesa, turning off on the road to Kaibito and Page, the landscape changes. Now there's layers of limestone mixed in with the sandstone so ya get whiter vistas, mountains and mesas with red and white layers. eroded nubs and hoodoos. The mesas are lower. The blue rounded hump of Navajo Mountain looms through the thick air.

And as we pass great Leche-e Rock and approach Page we see the three great smokestacks of the Navajo Power Plant belching, spewing brown slime into the sky. Along the way our road more-or-less roughly parallels the railroad whose sole purpose is hauling coal from the pit to the oven. There's catenary wire overhead so it's obviously an electric railroad, running off the proceeds.

We come into Page over Holy Hill, scads and scads of churches, buffered by expensive gas stations. In burning skies in Page we lunch at a generic Mexican tourista eatery, Zapatas - the food was good, everything else wasn't. Sometimes I wish the propina was 10% like in Guatemala, not 15% here in the States. At Zapatas, 15% is overtipping.

WEDNESDAY NIGHT: Late Wednesday afternoon we broke down six miles east of Kanab, engine stopped. And started and stopped. We got towed into town, to a shop that had just closed. Walked through the heat for Chinese food. Walked back through town - the weekly talent contest was taking place in the park bandshell - teams of dancing girls tonight. Across the street, the pawnshop had moved and downsized. Bummer Now we're parked next to the police station waiting for the repair shop to open in the morning. It's hot. There are lights all about. School's just over, kids are out making noise, revving and yelling from the street corners. This is NOT what we had planned.

The tow was good. The Chinese food was good. The talent-show dancing was spirited. Our spirits however are flagging under the heat and sights and sounds. Hopefully it's just a fuel line problem and in the morning we'll head up to 8000 or 9000 feet and chill out for a few days. Kanab is not as it was 38 years ago when I rolled in on a moped after crashing in Zion Canyon; it's very much as it was eight years ago when we camped on a shooting range; can the same be said for ourselves, of sameness? Paul Thereoux noted that [oops, the tape ran out...]

Day 65: Cedar Breaks Nat'l Monument
(Friday 4 June 2004)

10,000 FEET ELEVATION, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah. Wednesday night was most uncomfortable. Lights, and traffic, and kids out of school with cars, and heat. Somehow we survived til morning, left the RV in the shop, went strolling - gathered information at the library. Walking past blocks of Kanab, old houses, each block larger than some villages we've been through. And the sun beat down relentlessly. We skipped from shadow to shadow. Had a delightful little lunch at a delightful little place on North Highway 89 called the Vermillion Cafe which caters to bikers, bicyclists, slickrock mountainbike monsters. An InterNet coffee shop with sandwiches and Italian entrees. Highly recommended.

Repairs were finally finished at around 2:30 in the afternoon, over $500 worth - it was the fuel pump. Fuel pump's inside the gas tank. In order to change the fuel pump ya hafta take out the gas tank. We bought a few groceries at a Mormon market, restocked on granola. Then we escaped the sweltering heat (much cooler than Phoenix however) by going uphill, first through stunning redrock country over a divide into the Virgin River Valley. We gained elevation and the valleys got more forested, lush irrigated fields in the flats, horses running about.

We took the turnoff to Duck Creek (quack quack), up to the two-mile high pass that drops down into Cedar City - we gazed out on the huge expanse to the south, looking down into the Zion country. Then we rolled north a little ways up here to Cedar Breaks, up here at 10,000 feet, where it is cool and we're above the power plant pollution and there aren't many bugs hopping around. And the forests are of aspen and tall fir and even bristlecone pines, gnarly Alpine survivors. A few days will be spent here before we plunge across Nevada through Area 51 and back to the Sierras. Stay tuned.

MORMONS: I must say that everyone we encountered around Kanab were fine, friendly, helpful people, even if many of them are Mormons and thus, by definition. somewhat scrambled. The town has been hosting movie crews and rock and bike folk and canyon tourists for decades, many decades, so they're well practiced at accommodating outsiders.

But we hear conversations like, oh, in the auto repair shop, a young couple's tire has blown out and an old couple ran into into a deer, and they're talking, inquiring about where everyone lives. And the old couple lives somewhere around Virginia. And the young mother says, "Oh! If you live there, you must know Donny and Marie Osmand!" Um, are Mormons really this big a secret club?

Folks in some of the small towns above Kanab fret that people whizzing by in their vehicles don't even know they're going through these small towns. There's general agreement that even with the temperatures in Kanab hitting the low 90s, it's still a lot better than Phoenix where it was 112°f in the scanty shade. And this is only early June - wait til August!

And now we head for greater elevation - 10,000 feet.

CIMARRON ROSE

Now, down in Durango, in the year of '81
I rode in from the prairie, I was lookin' for some fun
I wanted to get pleasured from my head down to my toes
So I called... on Cimarron Rose

[chorus] Cimarron Rose, Cimarron Rose
Everyone kno-ows, she blows and she blows
Cimarron Ro-o-ose, Cimarron Rose
That hard-lovin' Texican grrl