Arizona, Utah,
through Monument Valley,
soon Bluff on the San Juan River
From Page heading south and then east, route 98 crosses other bistre deserts, other plateaus, then joins route 160 in the direction of Kayenta to the northeast.
before the Kayenta crossroads heading east on the 160
Further on, after Kayenta on the 163, a secluded, jagged mountain, named "El Capitan", rises away from the road.
Finally, the colossal plateaus, isolated like impregnable fortresses, are emerging, prefiguring the arrival at the famous "Monument Valley" park.
Wherever we go then, the employees and the population are almost exclusively Navajo Indians.
This route to Bluff from Page passes exactly at the intersection of 163 with the one that leads to the Visitor Center of "Monument Valley" 6 miles back east.
It is also there that the straight border, which follows a parallel, separates Utah in the north from Arizona in the south.
The panorama of the famous profiles of the red plateau and of these erected and isolated "temples" is as remarkable as the idea that one could have hitherto had of them.
Arizona to the north,
cunning Navajo negotiations
After a night spent in Bluff, a large village some 85 km beyond to the northeast, we want to book for the next morning a guided 4x4 tour in Monument Valley in passing there.
Visitor Center
These guided tours are exclusively provided by small teams of Navajos, who welcome tourists below the large parking lot of the Visitor Center in small huts-counters.
Incidentally, Monument Valley Park does not belong to the Great National Parks.
It therefore does not benefit from the Annual Pass issued for them, which we bought $ 80, a very advantageous amount when we multiply the visits.
However here for $ 20, access is possible 2 consecutive days.
As recommended, we try to negotiate the amount of our visit for the the following day.
Our Navajo interlocutor is of manifest bad faith : only $ 10 difference per person between the 1h30 tour and the 2h30 tour, the one that we choose ($ 110 instead of $ 120 / person).
But above all, as soon as he learns that we don't want to book for the same day, he describes cataclysmic weather for the next day, execrable, wind, storm !!!
The tension falls when a Navajo woman who manages business resumes warmly things in hands ; long live the Navajo matrilineal culture.
With her the transaction, less tortuous, is quickly concluded. It will be $ 100 / person (we are poor hagglers) for the 2h30 tour.
And tomorrow's weather will be ... perfect.
But it would have been necessary to negotiate more closely : in fact 2h30, it will be without much more than 2h, but two beautiful hours very dense on certain roads inaccessible to cars like ours.
Our guide, Daniel, is courteous and not very talkative.
However, finally getting out… of his reserve, we learn after more than an hour that he visited Paris when he was 9 years old and that he suffered tragic family events several years ago.
At the end of the tour, finding impassibility and restraint, he will not fail to pass us his “Trip Advisor” card so that we can contribute if possible to increasing his notoriety.
Tribute to you Daniel !!!
Utah,
the difficult path
of the San Juan River
In the direction of Bluff, before reaching Glenn Canyon and Lake Powell downstream, the San Juan River, eternally obstinate, must have created a passage across the plateau, and continues to wiggle in narrow meanders.
This passage called "Gooseneck State Park" (snake ripple would suit better), is 300 meters deep here.
The meanders are so narrow that the river, in the hard rock, progresses only 2.5 km as the crow flies over a length of the bed of 10 km, cutting the black strata with scalpel precision the upper ocher plateau.
Sumptuous and ungrateful anthracite landscape that is reached by a narrow road away from the 163, to reach the bare belvedere.
Some daring half-climber hikers, whose women speak French and savor the silence under a light awning facing the panorama, have descended into the dizzying depth of a meander to erect a cairn.
Here, as we can imagine, the climate is arid, and the thunderstorms between July and October, the dry period in winter and spring, deliver only 16 cm of water per year (at least 5 times less than our hexagonal average).
The extreme temperatures are -19 ° C and + 43 ° C, and the average temperatures vary between -1 ° C and + 31 ° C, for a altitude of about 1700m.
On the road to our accommodation in Bluff, the folded reliefs adorned with net strata between white, greenish, light blue and faded ocher, which make a painting with vigorous brushstrokes like those of Van Gogh.
We regret not seeing them at sunrise or sunset.
We should also avoid turning around so as not to have to tear ourselves away from the charm of the infinite plateaus, cousins close to those of Monument Valley.
Donkeys, free like vagabond Navajos, peacefully graze very thin grass on the side of the road.
The long ribbon follows the relief in slow curves, away from the valley of the San Juan River just to the south, then dive in the canyon of it.
It crosses its waters a little north of the famous rock titled " Mexican hat ".
A kind of high natural pyramid whose extreme top is capped with a large almost horizontal transverse rock, in miraculous balance on a very small black block.
Utah, Bluff Mormon Village
peaceful and welcoming
In the axis of its course to the east, the 163 merges into the 191 coming from the south, also called "Mexican Water Road".
Very small village on this road, in a wide valley framed by short ocher cliffs where the San Juan river flows, here is Bluff.
One notices especially a kind of perfectly managed Mormon museum, where are reproduced with a demanding attention to detail the houses of a group of pilgrims who ended up there in the 19th century after a difficult journey through impossible paths. He is named " Fort of Bluff ".
The large wooden building at the entrance reproduces on the ground floor a big store. Two elderly man and a few women dressed in early 20th century costume welcome with warmth and a great sense of hospitality. We are almost the only visitors.
The museum visit, free (but the tasting of a soft ice cream is worth gold) is edifying, accompanied by a short 20-minute film, well edited, on the epic at the origin of the founding of the village. After having made known our origin, it is even proposed to us a French version.
The Hole-in-the-Rock expedition
It is the crossing of an extremely difficult passage of the convoy in an impressive rock fault overlooking the Glen Canyon, the "hole in the rock", which in retrospect gives its name to this expedition.
Scheduled to last 6 weeks, it took him 6 months to reach his target, and finally here was founded the village of Bluff.
The epic is staged with the efficiency of a good western. It describes the so-called "Hole in the Rock" expedition, more often called the "San Juan expedition".
The convoy consists of 250 people (men, women and children), a thousand head of cattle, and 83 wagons. It starts in November 1879 and aims, starting from Fourty-Mile-Spring south of Escalante, to find at the shortest an implantation site in the region known as the "Four Corners" (the only region of the USA where the four state borders Colorado, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico converge at one point).
The only evidence of the arrival of these settlers is a vestige of a house of logs carefully maintained in original condition, but unrestored.
sand-sod = sand and grass
There is also a reproduction of a mud hut like the one where the Navajo lived, far from the tipee poorly adapted to the rather extreme rigors of the region : it is the "hogan". This house offers the advantage of very effective natural thermal insulation.
Here another "hogan" in Goulding, in front of Monument Valley, for tourists
We could envy in our countryside the means of the local population (presumably Mormon wealth is the explanation) to create such a museum almost from scratch.
Liar's poker (bluff?) around Bluff
A vain gold rush on the San Juan River in 1892
Bluff has also known, just over 10 years after its founding, a gold rush from 1892, which attracted here up to 3000 adventurers. But the gold discovered, a fine dust was impossible to exploit.
The rush ends as quickly as it started.
Misinformed, unprepared, they left, disgusted, more than 80 km of shores of the San Juan River around Bluff as early as 1893. Some even left "their bones bleached on the sand", and the remains of their poor settlement.
Only a few, carpenters, tailors come enrich local craftsmanship.
Towards the north exit, the road flows upwards through the cliff, as in a parade, called "Cow canyon" rising from the village.
Above a high, finely ridged base, the almost polished wall of the bistre cliff is made of enormous boulders. It is flanked by two tall and spectacular twin rock columns, each topped by a single block in the shape of a priest's hat from ancient times. Of course here are the 'Twin Rocks ".
At the foot of the cliff, a long and modern wooden building with large bay windows seems closed. To the point that we hesitate to enter.
It is, necessarily, the "Twin Rocks Cafe", where a few Navajo employees provide efficient service while the presumably Mormon boss runs his business in the background.
Yet there too, almost no one other than us ; surely the seasonal effect, because the means (building, concern for decoration, employees ...) seem disproportionate compared to the very meager clientele.
Our accommodation is also a beautiful wooden cabin inspired by these old houses, with all the comforts, in a set of modest dimensions but of quality.
In the village, only one gas station in the name of " Sinclair "(Good information from Guide du Routard), which is also the only grocery.
It's from Bluff that we leave the next day to discover the great site of Monument Valley.