Hot Flash Photography: MONUMENT VALLEY...JOHN WAYNE COUNTRY

From Four Corners, the drive was about 2 hours. Nothing much to see, the Navajo Nation is noted for extraordinary beauty, but it's few and far between, or at last far between. You drive for miles without seeing anything except mountains in the distant. They never seem to get any closer. Driving in to Monument Valley you start to see the buttes they are so famous for.

Have you seen John Wayne's "The Searchers" lately. Well, the movie was filmed here along with many other Wayne movies. John Ford, Wayne's director, was really fond of this area and used it for many film settings. Up until recently the ONLY motel was Goulding's, where the film crew stayed. Now there are several motels. But last year the Navajo's opened an extraordinarily beautiful hotel (when I say beautiful, I mean it fits the area), right in the Mittens. I was appalled when I first read it, then I researched it and found it was so architecturally wonderful and that it was the same color as the sands there and it must blended into the area so well. Well, if we're going back, that's where we're staying. EVERY ROOM has a balcony that views the Mittens. It's just so wonderful for a photographer.

THE VIEW

We had a third floor "Star View" room. There is no ceiling on the balcony so that you can view the stars. When you're out there in the middle of nowhere, with no lighting, the stars are just brilliant.

We weren't in the hotel 5 minutes when we had already booked a jeep tour with a Navajo driver. There is a 17 mile loop that you can drive through the buttes on your own, but the road is so bumpy and rutted and sandy that you will either get stuck or throw an axle. It's best to book a Navajo guide to take you through. We book Kwanna, a young Navajo, about 20ish, who was a dear. He even brought a little footstool so that I could climb into the jeep. He took us back into the "restricted" area, where we saw mustangs running free, natural rock windows, and petroglyphs. This was a real treasure for me. Dick really enjoyed this best in the whole 2 weeks. We thought we might see some wildlife, but not today. But the scenery was great and Kwanna was a real find.