The Journey to the Last Sunset

 

This is probably one of the most iconic views in the American Southwest - traveling from Mexican Hat towards Monument Valley on Highway 163. This is the way we had seen it many times before and it never loses its grandeur and majesty.

But something had changed since we had been here last quite a few years ago (pre-pandemic). Just a few hundred yards back, this view now is called Forrest Gump Point (where Forrest Gump in the movie suddenly stops running and decides to return home) and there are many turnouts with warning signs to watch out for pedestrians. In order to get this specific kind of photo you need to stand in the middle of the road. No problem at the time we were traveling, but I have no idea what is going on when way more tourists are stopping here and literally hogging the road to get their photo. It must be a nightmare. However, I do understand the lure to capture this view, just not with a bunch of people or cars. You might wonder why I felt the need to take another photo of this view since I already have dozens of it - yeah, I wonder, too. Maybe because it was the first time that I saw this in early morning light.

This is the view to Monument Valley:

Along the highway you can see many of these sheds. Navajos sell their jewelry etc. here during the tourist season, but now in winter the sheds were abandoned. 

While my cough had improved on our trip, the Geek's became worse and we decided against driving the loop in Monument Valley Tribal Park. We had driven it before in all kinds of weather - fog, snow and also under bright, blue sky. We knew it would take several hours, but since we still had three days of driving ahead of us, we wanted to get on the road. Into the West...

However, we didn't drive straight home. We did a little detour to the Navajo National Monument which is off the beaten path. While we hiked the trail along the edge of the canyon we realized that we had been here before. Look at this amazing canyon and pay attention to the big arch on the left.

Beneath this arch are the remains of cliff dwellings of the Ancestral Puebloan people. It's not as impressive as the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park in Southwest Colorado, but it was still worth the hike. You wonder how 800 years ago they were able to build these tiny pueblos in the face of a sandstone wall. Building it under the overhang of the arch protected them not only from the weather, but also from perpetrators. No photos of the dwellings since I didn't carry my big camera on this short but steep hike.

We also found more cryptobiotic soil crust (I wrote about this special soil crust here) - always fascinating and amazing.

This plant caught my eye. I had no idea what it was and asked one of the rangers in the visitor center. She was able to tell me that it is the seedhead of Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis), a native perennial grass. Isn't it beautiful?

Behind the - excellent - visitor center was a hogan, a traditional, earth-covered dwelling of the Navajo people. While most Navajos don't live in hogans anymore, their tradition dictates that important curing ceremonies can't be held anywhere else but in a hogan.

There is also a sweathouse. It looks like a tiny hogan without a smoke hole and is a highly effective bath. Here is how it works (from a NPS sign): "Stones are heated in a fire, then rolled in, or carried in on a wooden fork. The bathers undress outside, and then crawl inside. A blanket is hung over the door opening. Now all it takes is patience while the radiant heat does its work. This is the time for relaxing tired muscles - conversing - and perhaps singing sweathouse songs. Afterward, the bathers emerge from the sweathouse to rinse off with water, if any is available, or to rub dry with the soft, absorbent sand of Novajo country."

It reminds me of a good sauna (minus the sand).

This was a delightful detour. 

Then it was back on the road. We stopped for a very late lunch (we call that "lunner" in our family) at the Cameron Trading Post, a place we have known and enjoyed from the past and often stayed there for a night or two. It was incredibly crowded (it's not far to the Grand Canyon from here), but we were able to enjoy our lunch. I had a Navajo stew and wonderful tasty Navajo Frybread.

It was rather late when we arrived at the Grand Canyon. We didn't want to stay here for long, just drive along the rim road and stop every now and then. We were very lucky to enjoy the setting sun, when it was painting this unique rough landscape in brilliant, glowing colors. It was the last sunset of 2024, experienced in a wonderful location. The perfect ending of a year.

It took another two days to go home after we had stayed the night in Williams. We could have driven straight on interstates 40, 15 and 5 to be home 14 hours later. We had done that once and weren't eager to repeat that marathon. Instead, we left I-40 in Seligman and followed historic Route 66 to Needles which was a lot more relaxing and fun. The following drive through the Mojave Desert is something I always enjoy, even though I can imagine that some people might find it boring. I'm a big fan of deserts.

We stayed the night in Bakersfield, a city I have always found pretty awful. The Geek was feeling worse, so I drove the entire last leg of our journey. We made it home in 5 ½ hours because traffic was light, even around San Francisco (yes, I did stick to the speed limit).

Now - I want to join Nicole's Friday Face Off, but I can't do that without a face. So here I am right after the haircut that I got a couple days ago. I'm very lucky to have my hair stylist just a few houses down the street, one of my wonderful neighbors. She really knows how to work with my curls.

Petroglyphs and the Milky Way

 

After our slickrock hike in the Needles District we took the same way out of the park back to Highway 191 that we had been coming in - there is only this road in and out of the park. It's quite a long drive, but also a very exciting one. 

On our way in we had stopped at Newspaper Rock - a stop we always make when we're here. It's a rather large rock, larger than it appears in the above photo. It's a petroglyph panel etched in sandstone that records approx. 2000 years of early human activity. Prehistoric people etched in the rock from B.C. time to A.D. 1300. In historic time, Ute and Navajo people as well as European Americans made their contributions. Scholars are undecided in the meaning of the symbols and figures on the rock. It is not known whether the figures represent storytelling or clan symbols or hunting magic or... something else. In Navajo, the rock is called Tse' Hane' (Rock that tells a story) and I'm just going with the idea of storytelling.

See for yourself.

The next picture - well, you probably think that I am constantly taking pictures of bathrooms after I had shown you the signs in the Canyonlands bathrooms last week. No, I usually do NOT do that, but I had to here since I had never seen a bathroom with so much toilet paper. Please note that there is a lock at each bar - it's sad that you have to lock toilet paper so that it doesn't get stolen. 

And just a couple pictures from the road that I took in the morning when we were driving in the park. 

Isn't it amazing?

Then we left the park and drove South. We were slowly making our way back home. West of Bluff we took a dirt road to the Sand Island Petroglyphs - not quite as amazing as Newspaper Rock, but still worth the little detour.

The sun had already set when we arrived in Mexican Hat. On the way we had discussed whether we should visit Valley of the Gods again, but decided against it since it was getting late. (I noticed that I have never written about Valley of the Gods in this space - I certainly have to make good for that.) Sometime during the day we had booked a room in the Mexican Hat Lodge, the only open option to spend the night in this tiny place.

Years ago we had stayed here and at that time there was a "swinging steak" restaurant right next to the lodge. We were sitting outside (it was March and pretty chilly) and could watch how the steaks were cooked on the swinging grill. It was a very Wild West feeling. But alas! None of that was to be found in the dead of winter. However, our room was clean and warm, and there was a 7/11 across the street where we got some ramen and maccaroni salad. It was fine for one night.

It was such a quiet night, and since we were in the desert we headed out again to a dark spot off the highway. We got comfortable not quite on the hood of our car (but close enough) and watched the stars. What a show!

Yes, that is the Milky Way that you're seeing. It was so amazing. We think we saw Jupiter and tried to find some other constellations. We were only able to recognize Orion and the Big Dipper.

The Geek let the camera run for a while and got a 1-second result - I hope it plays.

Do you see the rock formation that gave Mexican Hat its name?

I will never forget this night. 

Bird Feathers

 

My garden attracts many birds and so it doesn't come as a big surprise that I often find feathers on the ground. Some of them I pick up with the intention to use them in a mixed media project. A short class by French artist Laly Mille inspired me to create these three small pieces.

The top photo shows my first laying out the papers and feathers on watercolor paper that I had cut to 3⅜" by 5⅜" pieces each. I did stick to this first layout, but added more to it in the process.

Here is how the individual pieces turned out.

Gluing down bird feathers is NOT fun and I wouldn't do it again. The mulberry paper under the feathers completely "disappeared" when I adhered it with gel medium which wasn't what I had in mind. In order to achieve a bit more texture I added coffee stained cheesecloth and rubbed some gesso on it.

Years ago for reasons I cannot remember I bought two 9 x 12" burlap canvas that since then had quietly collected dust on top of a shelf (they were wrapped in plastic, so no harm done). I finally found a use for one of them: I adhered the three collage pieces to it, using super strong tape. Voilà, I had a new mixed media art piece.

This is my contribution to Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.

Following the Cairns

 

It's been a while that I was in this space the last time. Truth be told, I wasn't in the mood to write a new blogpost for a few weeks. Every now and then I need to step away from my blog and that's what I did.

But now I'm here and I want to take you back to the Southwest. We're almost done with our trip of December 2024, only a few days are left and some of them were mainly spent driving. We had to cover quite some distance to eventually get home again. I wrote about Arches, Canyonlands' Island in the Sky and Dead Horse Point, and today we're going to Canyonlands again, but this time we're visiting the Needles District which is South of the Island in the Sky. It's quite a way to drive into Needles which might be one of the reasons that there are way less people. This has always been my favorite part of Canyonlands National Park, with an abundance of hiking trails. We wanted to hike the Slickrock Trail - and that's exactly what it was, a hike mainly across slickrock, the trail being marked by rock cairns.

This was the way up to the plateau. 

From up here and along the entire hike we had a 360º view across Canyonlands and its surroundings.

I took an idiotic amount of pictures and it was hard to select the ones for this post. I hope you have the stamina to look at a lot of photos.

You bet I couldn't leave those trees alone.

Here you can see that we really needed those cairns to follow, otherwise I'm sure we would have lost our way completely.

The views were simply amazing. How can one ever tire of this?

It always fascinates me that this hostile environment is enough for trees growing out of nothing. Their roots and bark made me stop over and over again.

The La Sal Mountains were still visible on the horizon.

You turn around a huge boulder and boom! another great view.

Our faces tell that we thoroughly enjoyed this hike. My contribution to Nicole's Friday Face Off.

View after view after view - and cairns and dead trees, of course.

Our shadows might be big here, but we are so insignificant in the vastness of this desert.

The texture of the slickrock was interesting and so was what remained of some shallow leftover puddles.

Our eyes were constantly watching for those cairns and our feet would follow. This entire hike is not particularly long, just 2.4 miles, but it took us forever because we stopped all the time to enjoy the amazing views - and take pictures, of course.

The soil here - as well as in many other places in this area - is very interesting. It's a living soil called cryptobiotic soil crust, an important part of arid and semi-arid ecosystems. They are composed primarily of very small organisms, created by living organisms such as algae, cyanobacteria and fungi. Cryptobiotic soil resists erosion by wind and water and absorbs water more quickly than regular soils and also have higher nitrogen. Thus they provide ideal conditions for desert plants to germinate and grow. However, cryptobiotic soil crust is very fragile and small pressure can break the crust. Humans can have a major impact on these delicate crusts. In all the parks I've seen signs to please stay on the trails and not walk on the soil - now, please guess how many footprints (and even tire marks) I saw on the soil? A footprint crushes and compacts the soil and it can take several decades or even longer for the cryptobiotic soil to recover. There will be erosion which exposes the roots of desert plants and eventually kills them. New plants have difficulties to getting established. With scarcer plant life, the animals that depend on these plants become threatened. It's a downward spiral. If we humans would be more considerate, look up from our phones and don't make everything about ourselves, this ecosystem might have a chance to persevere. (Sorry for the preaching.)

A cairn, a dead tree and the vastness of the land...

I noticed the wavy shape of this rock, a bit different from the other slickrock. A tale of geological history.

Do you see the spire-like rocks on the horizon? This is what the Needles District gave its name. 

We finally arrived back at our car by the side of the road. We both were in need of a restroom...

Yes, we made sure to shut that bathroom door!