Monument Valley

Monument Valley is a Navajo Tribal Park that is famous for its red sandstone towers and buttes. The park has a Visitor Center and a 17-mile scenic drive. The self-guided drive begins at the Visitor Center and loops through the valley on a dirt road with many breathtaking overlooks. The road is definitely not meant for RVs. Jeep tours are also available, but quite expensive. There is a campground in the park, as well as one 2 miles away at Goulding Trading Post.

Day 13

We left the heat of the Grand Canyon to arrive in the heat of Monument Valley.

It again was a bit of a “slow” day. When we got there we went to check into our campground and when we asked where it was we were directed to a gravel parking lot that was empty except for one other RV. That was home for the day. The only real shade for miles, to get out of the 100 degree heat, was created by an overhang above a picnic table on the other side of the “campground.”

There weren’t any hikes to do so the major attraction was the scenic drive through the park to see the different rock formations. The drive took a couple hours and brought us into mid-afternoon. We hung around in the shade for a while and then proceeded to start cooking dinner. We were just about finished cooking when we were politely interrupted by a young guy with an accent who asked where we had to pay for the campground. We then realized that we didn’t pay so we told him that we think it’s free.

To ruin the suspense I’ll just say it now. We, brace yourselves parents, picked up a hitchhiker. The kid who interrupted us turned out to be, Nils, a German and was on vacation alone in the US for 3 months. He didn’t have much of a plan except for the fact that he landed in SD and had to be in New York three months from then to catch his flight home. He started taking busses around but his luck with seat partners was not good and his funds were running low, so he started hitching rides.

We shared our dinner and he told us that he was planning to go over to the hotel early in the morning and “beg all the rich people for a ride to Moab.” It just turned out that the next morning we were going to Arches National Park which is located in Moab, Utah. We told him that we were headed there and so we were going to squeeze him in. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen someone more appreciative of anything in my life.

Earlier in the day he was brought into the park by a French family and then made friends with the executive chef of the restaurant at the Monument Valley Hotel who instructed him what he should buy to “eat a cowboy dinner.” The result was a $1.50 steak, beans and a pepper. Nils told us that the chef told him when he got out of work he was going to come by the campground to find him and hang out for a little. At around eleven o’clock the chef came by and we and Nils were up talking. We ended up hanging out with Nils and McNeal, the chef, who was a Navajo. It was a great night learning about the differences between German, American and Navajo culture.

• Jake