February 21
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We woke to clear blue skies and no wind. It had blown itself out overnight.
We would wound up spending two nights in Kayenta, so we left most of our stuff in the hotel and headed for Monument Valley for the day. Well worth seeing.
However, by the time we got there, the skies had started to cloud up again. The puffy white clouds were welcome, but the solid stratospheric layer wasn’t. Most of the skies in my photos taken there wound up solid white.
Also, there were a couple of formations that used to be accessible (based on my preliminary reading - Photo Traveler) on the self-guided tour that are now only available on the Indian guided tours. Totem Pole and Yei-be-Chei in particular were a bit of a disappointment. The only views we had of these merged the structures into the mesa behind them, making them hard to pick out. And I had seen gorgeous photos of these with rippled sand in front of them, leading the eye into the picture. Well, the sand dunes had a large “No Trespassing” sign in front of them. There was no way to legally capture that image at all. Would I go back if I could get better skies? Definitely.
The three photos above show one of the "Mittens" formations. The one on the left was taken from the Visitor's Center. The other two were taken on the self-guided tour.
The photo on the left above shows the other Mitten, while the one on the right shows a formation known as The Three Sisters.
The two photos above are the best I could do with the Totem Pole and Yei Bi Chi. As I mentioned above, the closer views were not open to the general public.
The photo on the left above is looking back through Monument valley from the far end of the drive, showing the many formations to be found here. The photo on the right is back at the Mittens with a nice stick in front of this one.
We spent 4-5 hours there. Speed limit on the driving tour said 15 mph. I doubt if we got over 10 - the road was either soft sand or washboard - not made for speed. The photo to the left shows the view I saw out of the passenger side mirror as we drove back up out of the valley.
We drove back to the motel to clean up, ate dinner, and crashed for the night.