March 21, 2022
the Four Corners
This was a drive day with a few stops along the way. first up was Monument Valley, there is a 25 car limit within the park so we tried to get there early. The sun finally pulled away from behind the clouds and we were able to get some really good photos, but after our a short time - we had a sandstorm blowing! I had been there ”back in the day”, and was excited to show Stacey all the cool views, but this time round things were different. The limited car thing I can understand, but there is a 2 hour time limit to make the 17 mile dirt loop road.
I am a slow and searching photo taker, so of course we were struggling to get out of there on time🥴. The other rule that kind of made sense (although it was not a thing back in the 90’s), was that there was No Hiking allowed along the route (a separate area that needed a permit was available), We did get out of the car at the “viewpoints”, but I felt rushed And would have really liked to walk around and explore… Otherwise, the pinnacles and spires are a wonder to behold, even if it’s just from your car.
Next was the Horseshoe Bend overlook - a place I’ve seen in photos, but had never visited. The $10/car parking lot was quite full, and the bus loads of people made me queasy, but we were tourists ourselves and I mustered the courage to carry on. I will say - the view of the Bend was worth everything the tourist trap was made for! It took a few minutes to get a space along the edge for the photo, and a few more minutes of laughs at the folks scared of the steep drop off, then it was back on the road.
With all the folks snapping pics, It was easy to find someone to take ours.
The mighty Colorado river.
& more pics of Monument Valley:
From here we got into Bryce and since I already had that blog posted - we are now officially caught up and done with the road trip… yeah! 85 blog posts…
thanks for encouraging me to keep on keeping on, I’ll now get to focus on the next grand adventure: Africa to the Caribbean on a 50‘ catamaran 😳…
and since we are stuck in Cape Town for over a month, I should be able read and write to my heart’s content 🤞