Images of Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park– Northern Arizona and Southern Utah, taken in May 2018.

CRAZY IDEA…I’m at Navajo National Monument which is only about an hour from Monument Valley; the skies are clearing and it’s only 1:30 p.m. I wasn’t intending to go but what the heck… With that I headed east through Kayenta and then north to the Monument Valley Tribal Park. It is a magical area with incredible formations that we’ve all seen in the movies or on postcards…ah, I mean screensavers (so as not to date myself). I’ve been here before, almost exactly ten years ago, but it’s as if I was seeing it for the first time. It’s a natural sculpture exhibit that is outside and larger than life or a play where you already know the characters; East and West Mitten and Merrick Butte, the classic view seen everywhere are the stars with a supporting cast of Big Chief, the King On His Throne, Castle Butte, Bear and Rabbit, Stagecoach, the Three Sisters and others. All with significant meaning to the Navajo Nation which runs and supports this park…and call it home. The 17 mile Valley Road winds its way through all the characters so that you view them from different angles. If there was one negative it would be that the park road is still dirt and in as bad as shape as ever. Not a problem for me as I’m cruisin’ in my all-wheel-drive Subaru but it’s got to be another story for all those families in their mini vans and mid-sized sedans…unless, of course, they are rentals!

With the skies cloudy to partly cloudy all afternoon I had to deal with some shadows or as I like to call it “difficult photographic situations” but in the end things came out reasonably well and in some cases made the image more interesting. Sometimes having a ‘crazy idea’ isn’t such a bad thing after all…