Monument Valley

One place that I have dying to go is Monument Valley. We decided a couple months ago that we would finally head to the Southeast corner of Utah for fall break. Our plans weren't quite definite and it seemed like things kept coming up. The week of our planned trip we weren't even sure that we would be able to go because it would be such a long drive for not enough time. Luckily things fell into place and we were able to leave Saturday night after a friend's wedding. We left Salt Lake around 9:00 PM and drove as far as we could. We made it to right outside of Moab until we were just too tired so we pulled off the road a couple miles and set up our camp. Sunday morning we woke up and kept going. We wanted to make it to Monticello to go to church; unfortunately we just weren't going to make it in time. I was looking up sacrament times and we found a small branch in LaSal. It is a very tiny town just south of Moab. There were only about 50 people in the branch. It was a fun experience to go to a branch in Utah!

After church, we headed to Newspaper Rock. Newspaper Rock is only an hour south of Moab. It is an incredible rock with so much history. There was a sign that said researchers don't really know what stories are being told on this panel so it is really up to personal interpretation. It was fun for Blake and me to try and figure out what the pictures were saying.

Blake had done some research about indian ruins that he wanted to hike to. We wanted to do a little hiking because we knew that we would be in the car for a long time. Making some stops along the way and doing a little hiking was perfect for splitting up all the driving. One of the hikes that Blake really wanted to do was to House on Fire Ruin. This is a very short hike; the description we read said about three miles round trip but it did not even feel that long. The hike was in the base of a canyon so that made it very easy. The ruins are amazing when lit up from the sun.

Like I said before, our plans weren't really set in stone. I had made a reservation for the campground at Monument Valley for the next night but as we were leaving the ruins we thought we should change our reservation to that night and drive to Monument Valley to see the sunset. On our way, we stopped at Mexican Hat and now Blake is determined to climb it....

After seeing the sunset, milky way, and sunrise over Monument Valley, I've decided that everyone needs to experience that once in their life. It was soooooo amazing. The campground has the best view, although it is a "wilderness" campground so you have to carry your gear from your car down a hill to the sites. We weren't aware of this and had a lot of gear, so we had to make a few trips to get everything down to our site. It was worth it though for the view. We made it to our site, had everything all set up and dinner cooking right as the sun was going down. The stars started coming out immediately after the sun went down. We could see the full milky way at 8:30! It was amazing. I took some star photos and we went to bed. At about 6:00 a.m., we woke up to the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen.

More on our road trip and seeing the most pristine Indian ruins in the next post.