Monument Valley

We came over a rise on Highway 163 and there it was, the view every road-trip poster has stolen from: the long empty ribbon of asphalt running dead straight toward buttes that seemed too large and too orderly to be natural. Lia pulled over so we could stand in the middle of the road like everyone else, and I felt something I had not expected, a kind of recognition. Every western I watched as a boy in France was quietly standing here in the sand, and now the wind was actually in my collar and the red dust was actually on my shoes.

The Valley Drive

We paid our entry at the Navajo Tribal Park and took the seventeen-mile dirt loop ourselves, though the road is rough enough that I gripped the wheel the whole way. The famous Mittens rose first, two buttes with stone thumbs pointing skyward, then Merrick and the Elephant and a dozen more, each one revealing itself as we crawled around it. What the pictures never tell you is how quiet it is between the stops, just wind and the tick of the engine cooling, the sandstone shifting from rust to blood-orange as the sun moved. Lia kept whispering, though there was no one to disturb but ourselves.

A Navajo Guide

For the restricted backcountry you need a Navajo guide, and hiring one was the best decision we made. Ours was a quiet man named Harrison who had grown up in the valley, and he drove us in his battered truck to arches and hogans the loop road never reaches. He stopped at a slot in the rock, cupped his hands, and sang a few notes that hung and folded back on themselves for a long time. Then he explained which formations his family used as calendars, which held stories he could tell and which he could not. We had arrived thinking Monument Valley was scenery; we left understanding it was somebody’s home.

Sunset at the View

We stayed the night at The View hotel, whose every room faces the Mittens, and I am not ashamed to say we sat on our little balcony for two hours doing nothing at all. The buttes went from orange to purple to a deep bruised blue, and one by one the stars came out until the sky was thick with them, more than I have ever seen. Lia made tea on the room’s kettle and we wrapped in the blanket and watched the Mittens disappear into the dark. Somewhere a coyote started up, then stopped. It was, without exaggeration, one of the finest evenings of my life.

Getting There

Monument Valley straddles the Arizona–Utah border on Navajo Nation land, genuinely remote and worth the effort it takes. We drove up from Flagstaff, about three hours north through Kayenta, though many people fold it into a loop with the Grand Canyon and southern Utah’s parks. The nearest sizeable airports are Flagstaff and Page, each a few hours off. Note that the Navajo Nation observes Daylight Saving Time even when the rest of Arizona does not, so double-check the clock before booking a sunrise. Bring cash for the guides, drive slowly on the loop, and give this place at least one overnight.