We have breakfast at our hotel which was great and around 9am we leave for Monument Valley.

On the way we did not foresee any stops – there are not really special places to see on this road – so we can spend the rest of the day in Monument Valley. We drive through Kayenta, AZ where we first intended to stay but there is nothing to see as Marianne from the travel agency told us, later we will see that this was a good idea…

Once we leave Kayenta, we get a first view of the grandeur of Monument Valley. We park the car and take some pictures. The rest of the drive we will stop regularly in order to shoot pictures. We enter Utah and have to change our watches, as it is one hour later here but we decide not to do this yet. Our hotel is in Utah, Monument Valley is in Arizona with the entrance in Utah and tomorrow we will be back in Arizona. One tip: Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, they have enough sun there!

A bit before 12 noon we arrive at the entrance and pay 5$ per person. We drive towards the park where there is a nice viewpoint next to the visitor center with view on the “East and West Mitten”. You can enter the Navajo Tribal Park and reach the loop around the park. The beautiful moments are shot with the camera. A bit later we reach the loop and there we see the “Dineh Stables”. Now something strange is happening, when we watch Nathalie’s face you can see something happening! You can see that huge smile on her face with wide open eyes… Strange isn’t it!? We park the car and inform if Nathalie can hire a horse to gallop here as she did many years ago. She is lucky. She will ride a horse called “Shadow” which is a real mustang. Otis, the local guide, will accompany her. They are only the two of them and as Nathalie is an experienced rider, which Otis notices immediately, she asks if it is also possible to go fast and that is no problem. This will be fun! LuSo and Patrick leave for an hour and a bit further at the “Rain God Mesa” they enjoy a lunch. After lunch we pick up Nathalie at the stables and she is just over the moon. The rest of this day she will have that great smile on her face…

We drive around the loop, take pictures where we can and around 3.50pm we are back at the visitor center where again we take some pictures and at 4.40pm we drive towards our hotel which we reach after 10 minutes. We clean up and go to the “Stagecoach Dining Room” where the food is very good. Afterwards we return to our rooms from where we have a beautiful view of the sunset over Monument Valley… time to go to sleep… what do you think Nathalie will be dreaming about…;-)

Daytrip approx. 241 km