Third Day at the South Rim, Grand Canyon

Navajo Nation and Monument Valley

You might think the Navajos are a little arrogant or pretentious calling their reservation a "nation."  Please realize that the "big rez" as some Navajo call it, is bigger than the state of West Virginia, and when you include all the satellite Navajo reservations in Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, Navajos are justified calling it a "nation."

In the Colorado portion of the "big rez," sunflowers lined the road like the ones above. It didn't stay that way for long as the land became more arid and desert like in Arizona.

Lots of blooming scrub brush, though.

The above picture with the flat rock precariously balanced gives the nearby town of Mexican Hat, Utah its name.  By the way, Mexican Hat is the last place you can buy beer or wine before entering the Navajo Nation.  For obvious reasons to all of us, the sale of booze is illegal in the Navajo Nation.

A thin ribbon of green outlines a creek in Navajo land where the farming is sparse.

This is the smallest butte I saw on Navajo Nation land.  The land around it is absolutely flat and the rock juts up through it in a near perfect miniature of some the area's other "monuments."

I spent all my time today driving around and in Monument Valley.  If you have ever enjoyed some of the classic western movies such as the ones directed by John Ford and those starred in by John Wayne, this is the location they used for the movies.  The land is just plain awesomely beautiful.

  I find the spindly rock spires of Monument Valley fascinating.  The colors of the mesas and buttes are just beautiful.  Hard for me to write prose worthy of the landscape.

If you look closely, you can see a "keyhole" in this butte known as the "west mitten."

  A"view" of the Navajo Tribe's Luxury Resort, The View, from the valley floor .  I agree that it must be a world class luxury resort since the hotel rooms I priced start at $340 per night.  Much too luxury for me.  I must agree, though, that every room has the best view of the most famous "monuments" in Monument Valley.  If you have ever seen the complex the Navajos have built to attract tourists like me, then you know these Indians are making a lot of money.

Merrit Butte in the center; East Mitten Butte to the right, West Mitten to the left.

West Mitten Butte in the center of this photo

The road to (and from) Hell shown above is a story onto itself.  I would never drive it again.

Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

  The weather was clear and a little cool but the scenery was gorgeous and the train was a first-rate restored coal-burning steam powered locomotive with restored/modified passenger cars.  My car had seats facing outward, not forward which was good for photography.

 The route for this scenic tour of the Rocky Mountains followed the Animas River in Colorado for much of time.

I don't know what mineral(s) or sediment was in the water, but it had an odd pale blue-green color.

The rail route was very curvy.  I took this and most of the other photos from my perch in the second from the last car on the train.  The great number of curves on this route is the major reason why the railroad builders used narrow gauge track.

The tour ride had a two-hour layover in Silverton, Colorado which had numerous restaurants and gift shops.  In this shot, another train is pulling into Silverton for their layover.