Monument Valley

Sunday, August 14

This morning around 3 am Mom and Dad had to head to the airport for a flight home to North Carolina. They left us last night and stayed in a hotel near the airport so they wouldn't wake us up when they had to leave.

They definitely made the most of their 23rd anniversary; they flew home, picked up Sophie, did some unpacking, had dinner and totally passed out. They had a long day.

We started our day around 7:30 and slowly got ready to hit the road. We started heading from Mesa Verde to Monument Valley, which is located in Navajo Nation. It was a long drive, so we split it up with a stop at Four Corners Monument. We took a few funny pictures and shopped around at the kiosks at the monument.

We're pulling for our state - Utah, New Mexico, Arizona or Colorado

We stopped at a Burger King that Chuck and Cheryl had told us about; the owner’s father was part of the Navajo code talkers in WW2, so he had converted the Burger King into a museum on the code talkers. It was a very interesting stop, I know I learned a lot!

A rather unusual look inside the Burger King - The Navajo Code Talkers from WWII

After another 2 hours on the road we finally got to Gouldings campsite… this one was huge, it had a restaurant, gas station, museum, gift shop and a bunch of other stuff in addition to the RV park.

A beautiful setting for our campsite for tonight.

After exploring the campsite we took the 2 hour drive around Monument Valley National Park. This is where a bunch of movies were filmed, several of the John Wayne western movies, Forest Gump, Back to the Future 3 and over 100 more.

The west and east mittens

When we got back to Gouldings we had supper at the camp restaurant and checked out the gift shop before watching the sunset and heading in for the night. We’ve been getting a lot more tired so our adventures are getting a little shorter.

A nice view for dinner

Monday, August 15

Today was supposed to be a big driving day to the Grand Canyon, but Papa found that we had an extra day planned, so he made reservations at another campsite near Lake Powell about 2 hours towards the Grand Canyon. Once we got settled, we headed to the pool to do some swimming before going to the tourist section of town to try and find something to do.

Papa was extra lucky and managed to score us a boat ride through one of the canyons in Lake Powell, the second largest reservoir in the United States. The ride was beautiful, a little windy, but a real treat. The only weird part was when we would be splashed with the water, it didn’t taste salty… definitely threw us off for a second! Our boat driver was really good at handling the boat, he did a 5 point turn inside the canyon because the boat was longer than the width of the canyon! It was crazy.

The largest houseboat I've ever seen

The Glen Canyon Bridge was built to help workers on the dam go from one side to the other while the dam was under construction.  It is over 700 feet above the Colorado River which flows beneath it.

Tuesday, August 16

Papa and I went back to the dam this morning to explore it more, it turned out that they were giving tours of it, so we signed up and spent about 45 minutes on top of the dam. I learned a  lot and Papa got a ton of super cool pictures of the dam.

Anna and Papa took a tour of the Glen Canyon Dam.  We were the only people on the early morning tour and we received an excellent tour.

Lake Powell is the second largest reservoir in the US.

When we got back from the lake, we went to the Dam (which was HUGE) and ended up at a nearby Denny’s for supper.

Once we got back to the RV and packed it up we decided to make a stop at horseshoe bend, a landmark of Page. The hike was long and that day there was “extreme heat” so Evan and I did the hike ourselves. It was beautiful but oh my gosh it was hot, we were walking in sand for what felt like forever. After all, it was the desert!

These two pictures provide some perspective on how vast the canyon is.  The boats are floating on the river below and you can hardly see them in the photo below.

After driving for about 2 hours, Papa pulled over at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. We hadn’t ever heard of it, but it was a national area inside of the Navajo Nation. This canyon was huge, as we were pulling up to it, we guessed that it may have been part of the Grand Canyon… it wasn’t. We walked out on a bridge over the Colorado River… they didn’t have any signs to tell us, but it was beautiful. We saw 2 condors under the bridge as well as a few rafters.

Today’s destination was somewhere right on the border of Arizona and Utah, I don’t know exactly where but we’re around 40 minutes away from the Grand Canyon.

We decided to have a chill day instead of going straight to the canyon, so we set up our enos and just hung out for a while. A few hours later some neighbors pulled into the lot beside us. It was a Dad and his 2 kids on an RVing trip all the way from Canada. His daughter, George is 13 and his son Warren was 11.

Evan and I played with them all afternoon, we walked to the horses, shared funny stories, played soccer, volleyball and compared Canada to America. We got to know them really well, and they stayed in our RV with us until around 10 when we decided to call it a night.