VALLEY OF THE GODS +BABY

Part 8 in a series about exploring the American West with an 8 week old baby

By Tommy Nagle

You've heard of Monument Valley. You've likely seen Monument Valley. It's famous for a reason. Mainly Cowboys And Injuns And Big Red Rocks.

"...its five square miles have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West."

Keith Phipps - Film Critic

However, if you're on budget, and would prefer not to have to pay to enter Monument Valley (it's on Navajo Nation land, where they're more than entitled to charge a fee) then Utah's Valley of the Gods is your answer.

In terms of the red sandstone mesas and towers, it looks very similar to Monument Valley, but it's on BLM land, so while there aren't any marked trails or campsites, it doesn't cost anything to visit. A sandy, uneven gravel road snakes through the area for about 17 miles, and you can stop at numerous flat areas along the way to camp overnight, but you will have to make sure you have all the supplies you need.

But more of that later. We had to get there first...

Part of the reason we chose to rent our little Winnebago Travato RV was the convenience of having a fully functioning toilet in a (relatively) small vehicle form factor. An added bonus was that the toilet doubled as a shower. But in fact, come the end of our trip, we found we had never actually used the shower part.

Our feeling was that, quite apart from the awkwardness of showering in a space significantly smaller than an aeroplane bathroom, it would just end up making everything soggy and damp, thereby negating the pleasure, novelty and sense of superiority engendered by being able to sit in one's vehicle and purge one's nether parts whilst the rest of the proletariat are baring their bums to holes in the ground.

But I digress. After one night's boondocking, we were sufficiently dusty and sweaty to warrant a trip to Mesa Verde RV Resort, where we paid actual money to use the showers. I don't know what a fair price to take a shower is. I suppose when you're in the middle of the desert, $7.50 isn't bad, and to be fair, they do take pride in the cleanliness of their bathrooms. But when you're paying $7.50, you make sure you make the very best of that shower. Hey, perhaps that's why we didn't go to Monument Valley. We spent all our money on showers.

After replenishing some fresh veg supplies, we ate lunch at La Casita de Cortez, a decent Mexican restaurant in Cortez, Colorado, a town about an hour and 45 minutes east of the Valley of the Gods.

And then, with a full belly and an earworm annoying theme song from an informative podcast about France ringing around my head...

...we were on our way.

We drove through a sparse landscape.

A sparse landscape with an alien spacecraft erupting from beneath the desert:

(AKA Shiprock - Thanks Uncle Nick for pointing this out...)

The welcome to Utah sign had seen better days. Looks like someone had used it for shotgun practice. What kind of moron goes out to shoot at a sign? Even friggin Stevie Wonder could hit this thing. It takes zero skill to shoot something fifteen feet wide and eight feet tall. Try your own head next time, idiot.

Oh, there's that Delicate Arch again...

It's a lonely old road, Utah 162:

⇡ They get so lonely they forget how to paint the road markings properly ⇡

We drove through Aneth.

Aneth has a population of 600 people.

50% of them are below the poverty line.

Aneth has a water tower.

It doesn't have much else.

The Utah 162 highway ends at Bluff, a town of even fewer people than Aneth.

And then on from Bluff, the 20 or so miles to the turn off to Valley of the Gods road:

When we finally turned on to the road, the sun was getting low.

We didn't want to, or have to, go far, before we found a spot to park up for the night.

The little man was happy to be free of his car seat.

So we celebrated with a panorama, naturally.

I tried to take a picture of the sky, but there were all these stars in the way.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING

Be prepared for lots of photographs of bits of rock. Just saying.

And just like that, we were spat out the other end of Valley of the Gods road, onto Utah Highway 261.

To continue our journey we had to go past Monument Valley.

We couldn't help but do the tourist thing and get a photo at what now has become known as Forrest Gump Hill. The polaroid of which now resides in my wallet.

This is mainly so:

I can show it to strangers in anonymous roadside bars while sipping manfully on a Bud Lite and listening to country music,

or...

Detective Jessop wiped the raindrops from her brow as she hunched down, regarding the small rectangular wallet on the ground. It was a light tan colour, but getting darker every minute as it absorbed the precipitation from the perma-grey Portland sky. She took out a cheap ballpoint pen from inside her jacket, the end chewed and cap missing, and flipped the wallet open. The polaroid picture slid out, face up, as she did so. In it was the man they were looking for, the man that had been seen being bundled into the back of a pickup truck not forty five minutes previously. The picture told the story of a moment on a bright, sunny day, midday by the looks of the shadows. Raindrops hit the shiny surface of the photo and she cursed her lack of foresight. She put on the pair of standard issue recycled disposable gloves from her pocket and picked up the photo by the edges, like a treasure, signalling a patrolman to take care of the rest of the wallet while she dealt with the task in hand. It was probably nothing more than a family snapshot. He was wearing a rough approximation of a cowboy hat, probably something overpriced from what was then REI, she thought, and he was smiling as his wife and child stood next to him. But where was it taken? Did it matter? The man hadn't set the exposure correctly on the camera, meaning that the background was bleached white. Perhaps the lab could run it through PhotoFoundry and pull back some of the contrast. Perhaps she'd find out how he'd taken this picture in the first place. No one had sold instant film in over fifty years, the chemicals being deemed far too toxic and detrimental to the environment. Any leftover stock was either destroyed, in museums or private collections. Who was this man?

Below, one of my favourite shots from the trip. Even though it's just a sign, I love the patina, the colours, the shadows, the clear blue sky. I should make a print of this one.

There wasn't long left on our trip. Only five more locations to visit, the next being Lake Powell in Arizona. As we drove toward the water, the land seemed to agree.