I realized that I have not updated my blog at all in 2016. That's mainly because I have not taken any major trips. Sure, I took a 4-day ski trip to Telluride, Colorado, and a long weekend trip to New York City but I have mainly stayed in Arizona since coming back from Singapore in late December, 2015.
One trip that I was looking forward to is to Monument Valley and Hunt's Mesa in northern Arizona and southern Utah. This was part of an Arizona Highways Photo Workshop (AHPW) in which
I was one of the Volunteer Trip Leaders (VTL). There were 15 participants, two VTLs', and one photographer, LeRoy DeJolie. This is home for LeRoy, his Navajoland, where his ancestors lived. LeRoy has been working with AHPW for 20 years and leads many trips to iconic places on the Navajo reservation - Monument Valley, Canyon de Chelly, Antelope Canyon, etc. This is an area of immense beauty, with its unique red rocks and geologic formations. The Navajos have been wonderful custodians of these geologic treasures, considering some of these places sacred as their ancestors have for so many generations. It's a very sparse, barren area, thinly populated and until few years ago, some of the Navajos lived in hogans (pronounced ho guns) with no electricity or running water.
Tourists from all over the world come to see Monument Valley. LeRoy was not only our photographer, he was our guide as well. He knows all the right places to take the best pictures at the right time. This is not your run-of-the-mill tour. It's a photography tour infused with a lot of history and culture.
Our participants came from all over the United States - New York, Florida, New Jersey, Michigan, California, and Arizona. One even came from France.
We started our tour at about 7 am, May 17, from a Holiday Inn in Phoenix. A chartered bus driven by our driver, Cricket, took us to Flagstaff and stopped for lunch at the Cameron Trading Post. This is a very busy tourist stop for tourists traveling to and from northern Arizona. A specialty here is the Indian fry bread. I had an Indian taco, which is Indian fry bread, with taco toppings - cheese, tomato, lettuce, and ground beef.
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Navajo Taco
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After Cameron, we headed to Kayenta. On the way we stopped at a place where there are dinosaur tracks. Then we stopped in Tuba City, where we visited the Navajo Code Talker Museum. The Code Talkers were instrumental in the American winning the Pacific over Japan during World War II. They use coded Navajo language to communicate among the American forces. The Japanese were never able to decipher the coded messages.
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| Dinosaur tracks |
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| Tuba City Trading Post where the museum is located |
At Kayenta we checked into the Hampton Inn. About an hour after we checked, we were ready for our first shoot. Our first location is El Capitan, about 30 minutes away from Kayenta.
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| El Capitan |
We were supposed to have a morning shoot but it rained. After breakfast and a critique session, we headed towards Hunt's Mesa. We had an outfitter, John Holiday, and his team of cousins and nephews, take our group in 4 four-wheel drive vehicles up to the mesa. The terrain is very rough. You can only go up there by foot, horse or 4-wheel drive vehicles.
About 100 yards from the mesa, LeRoy asked us to walk up to the top, but looking down. He gave a short speech about how sacred the place is to the Navajos and how his ancestors had lived here for generations. At the top, he asked everyone to look up. The group just went "ooh" and "wow". It was a majestic view of Monument Valley
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Panoramic View of Monument Valley
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| Monument Valley with rain clouds |
Weather conditions over the next 24 hours were perfect for photography up in Hunt's Mesa. The sky opened up, adding a little blue to the abundant rain clouds. We spread out to different points on the mesa to capture different shots of the valley. Later in the afternoon, it started raining lightly. A wonderful steak dinner was served by the outfitter. We retired to our tents after dinner because there was nothing else we could do with the rain falling. At night a full moon came out. It was as if someone turned on the night-light so that we can see where we were going. Then the stars sparkled in the sky. Some tried to capture the milky way but it was too bright.
In the morning the scene in the valley was something rarely seen. Because of the rain the night before, there was a thermal inversion, which means fog filled the valley. You could see some of the tips of the monuments but not the valley. It was as if we were up in the clouds. A rare and beautiful sight indeed.
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| Fog in Monument Valley |
We stopped at various spots to take pictures as we came down from Hunt's Mesa. One of the places was where Forrest Gump, the fictional character from the movie of the same name, stopped running. It was also an opportunity to see Monument Valley from a different location and perspective.
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| Forrest Gump stopped running here |
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| Gooseneck State Park |
We had dinner that night at the Swinging Steak restaurant in the small town of Mexican Hat in Utah. We spent the night at the Gouldings Hotel in Arizona.
Early the next morning, at 4:45 am, we were ready for a tour of Monument Valley. We loaded up onto two open-sided trucks and were driven by two experienced Navajo women guides. Our first stop was a place called Totem Pole, where we arrived just before the sun rises. The 30 minutes after sunrise is known as "sweet light" to photographers because this is when you have perfect lighting condition for photography. Below are 3 of those shots.
Later we stopped at a few popular locations: John Ford's Point, Three Sisters and Tear Drop Arch.
We left Gouldings at about noon and headed home to Phoenix. The group decided to stop in downtown Flagstaff for lunch and then continue south, arriving in Phoenix at about 6 pm. Most of the out-of-town participants were staying at the Holiday Inn. A final get together over dinner and drinks concluded this memorable trip.
I wrote a blog for AHPW that described Hunt's Mesa as a sacred location for the Navajos. Here is the link to that blog:
Hunt's Mesa - A Sacred Place
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