Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

Day 3: Today, we took a three hour drive from Grand Canyon to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, which straddles the AZ-Utah border. Along the way, we stopped at a few more points along the Desert View Drive (from yesterday), including the famous Watchtower constructed to imitate the Anasazi watchtowers from hundreds of years ago. We also went to a Navajo jewelry and pottery stand to buy handcrafted jewelry. All the women setting up shop lived at the nearby Cameron town. One of the women mentioned that the women with young children primarily lived in Cameron because that's where the school buses stopped, however there were a number of elderly Navajo who opted to live in the hillside which was pretty isolated. Much of our drive was single-lane highways with nothing for miles. The Navajo and Hopi towns we passed were pretty barren with minimal development.

As we drove along one such highway, we saw signs for dinosaur tracks and decided to check it out. A Navajo man approached us and took us on a "tour" of the tracks, which looked like mud tracks of a three footed bird with claws of varying sizes. There were other tourists milling about, also being taken on these "tours." He took us to a fossil, circled by rocks, and stated that these were the remains of a dinosaur. We eyed the skeleton. "Which dinosaur?" Fasiha asked, somewhat skeptically. "Duckbill," the guide responded. "They are like a small T-rex." Not two seconds later, another guide led his group to the same set of fossils. "Raptor," he announced. Our guide strolled another few feet forward and pointed to what looked like a pile of rocks. "This," he proclaimed with a flourish,"are dinosaur droppings!" "Reealllyyyy!" Fariha exclaimed and somehow Fariha and Fasiha managed not burst into laughter. The guide complained of how thieves dug up several footprints and sold them to museums. It is not entirely clear to us what part of all of this what fact and fiction. The guided ended by saying he never asked Americans for a fee but donations were encouraged. We were willing participants in this hoodwinking venture.

Finally, we reached our destination - Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. We got to take an amazing drive around the famous Mittens along an unpaved path. The road was very bumpy but it was a great drive. On our way back, we stopped to have Navajo fried bread and tacos. We caught a bit of the sunset at Grand Canyon on our return.

Next stop: Bryce Canyon.