It's been a while since we've been a-bloggin'. Mostly due to a gaggle of precocious 5th graders, the general hecticness of the holidays and an unfortunate "tet-a-tet" with an out of control 18 wheeler. It's been an interesting couple of months...
It all began with a short trip we took up to Canyon Country: Southwestern Utah and Northern Arizona. The plan was to shoot video footage in Monument Valley for a video I'm making about cowboys. Despite cold weather, wind and some frustrating technical difficulties, we squeeked out some usable shots in 2 days.
Monument Valley is part of the Navajo Parks System, its on reservation land. The conflict and contrast between the tourists that visit the park and the Navajos' efforts to preserve this sacred site are palpable. This became most evident at John Ford's Point, one of the most famous and majestic view points in the park. There's a great scene in
"the Searchers" shot at John Ford's Point. In fact, Ford shot many movies in Monument Valley including "My Darling Clementine," "Stagecoach, " and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon." Its an undeniably photogenic place, begging to be framed up. Its no wonder Ford was so fond of this place. Largely due to him, the world's visual perception of the "Great American West" looks like Monument Valley. Movie-goers were armchair tourists in this place before there was such thing as the Navajo Parks System.
The current scene at John Ford's Point is much the same geologically, but the human presence has changed. Try adding 2 busses of Japanese tourists, a handful of Europeans in rented RVs and one old Navajo man on horseback who trots out to the tip of John Ford's Point for photo ops whenever a sizable herd of these modern day "searchers" roll up. When he notices the photography begin to ebb, he trots back to towards the busses collecting tips. The Navajo man gets a small compensation and the tourists return home with their money shot: A real cowboy, dressed in a red cowboy shirt, a big bolo tie and a huge cowboy hat on horseback against a red rock vista with the buttes and mesas that have become so iconic of the west. Best of all, he is far enough away that his skin color is indiscernable.
After Monument Valley, we went to Grand Staircase Escalante. On the way we stopped in Page, AZ to check out some views of the Colorado downstream of Lake Powell, a man-made lake created by daming up the Colorado at Glen Canyon. This spot is called Horse Shoe Point.
Here are a couple pictures of our campsite. We do luxury-style car camping, no real roughing it for us! Notice Krista hauling our air mattress on her back. Temperpedic? No thank you!
In Grand Staircase Escalante (which is in Utah) we hiked a slot canyon trail. This is a section of river bed that has carved a very narrow and deep section out of sandstone. In some places the slot was no wider than the width of my shoulders. It was cool and damp for most of the hike, but in some places the canyon opened up into wider "rooms."
That same day we also visited a place called "the Toadstools."
5 days into it, the weather was not getting any warmer, so we decided to head towards warmer climes. Unfortunately, this was harder to find than we thought. We ended up driving down towards Flagstaff, and on the way stopped at Sunset Crater.
We asked around for a good place to camp, inquired about nighttime temperatures. With a broken zipper on my sleeping bag, we were trying to avoid anything colder than the 40's. A friendly park ranger said that if we were him, he'd go down to the Wigwam Motel on Route 66. Always ones to follow the advice of a government employee, we called the Wigwam, made a reservation and hightailed outta there.
There really is nothing like spending the night in a fake wigwam...
Thanksgiving weekend surprised us with a blanket of 6 inches of snow. It melted pretty quickly, but was stunning while it lasted. Luckily, we had nowhere to go, so we threw snowballs at Sienna (the Residency Director's daughter), and enjoyed a Thanksgiving potluck in "the Bighouse" (our rumpus room, of sorts). David and I organized the dinner, so we took on the most important items:
