Monument Valley - December 26-27, 2010

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is not a national or state park. The area of the park is relatively small. In the park, except for the visitor center and one trail, non-Navajo visitors are not allowed to enter unless escorted by a Navajo guide. But there are plenty of tour operators.

In case it seems odd, it's actually not unlike other native tribal reserves around the world. Like at many other reserves, the Navajo consider these mesas as cultural and religious landmarks, and forbid climbing on them. But this one is different because it has been made so well known through being the film site of all the famous Western movies. Everything from John Wayne's Westerns to Back to the Future III had parts filmed there. Monument Valley is now the traditional symbol of the Old West.

You often hear of Monument Valley as being in Utah. It's actually on the Utah/Arizona border. The town of Monument Valley and the airport are in Utah. The visitor center and these views are in Arizona. I took some pictures in the late afternoon and at sunrise. Clouds prevented the best lighting from happenning right at sunset.

The visitor center also has exhibits about the WWII Navajo Code Talkers, the group of Navajos in the US Marines who made a military code out of their language and another original code within it. The Navajo Code Talkers served in nearly all the battles in the WWII Pacific theater. The Japanese monitored Allied transmissions and broke all our early codes in the war until the Navajo Code Talkers, which was never broken. The ability for the Marines to use a quickly-delivered spoken code that the enemy couldn't break was one of many significant factors in Allied victories in battles across the Pacific.

December 2010 southwest states road trip

• Meteor Crater, Dec 26
• Monument Valley, Dec 26-27
• Canyonlands Nat'l Park, Upheaval Dome impact structure, Dec 27
• Arches Nat'l Park, Dec 28
• Mojave Air & Space Port, Dec 30